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THE    WEB 


The  Authorized  History  of 
The  American  Protective  League 


The  Web 


BY 

Emerson  Hough 

Author  of 

The  Mississippi  Bubble,"   **  54-40  or  Fight, 

"  The  Magnificent  Adventure,"  etc. 


A  Revelation  of  Patriotism 

The  Weh  is  published  by  authority  of  the  National 
Directors  of  the  American  Protective  League,  a  vast, 
silent,  volunteer  army  organized  with  the  approval 
and  operated  under  the  direction  of  the  United 
States  Department  of  Justice,  Bureau  of  Investigation. 


The  Reilly  &  Lee  Co. 
Chicago 


Copyright,  1919 

By 

The  Reilly  &  Lee  Co. 


Made  in  V.  S.  A. 


The  Web 


-«cC^ 


^ 

^ 


SPECIAL    MEMBER'S    EDITION 

THE  WEB 


^3 


??5: 


Mr. 


Rank Badge  No 

In  appreciation  of  his  patriotic  service  to 
his  country  during  the  Great  World  War 

AMERICAN  PROTECTIVE  LEAGUE 
NATIONAL  DIRECTORS 


This  Book  is  No. 


(Mi  (33^/ 


V 

y 

HSU^/ 


^1^^ 


To 
THE    UNKNOWN  AMERICANS 

ummmed,  unhonored 

unrewarded 

who  made  this  history  possible 


\ 


THE  CALL  OF  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE 
UNITED  STATES 

"  It  is  a  distressing  and  oppressive  duty,  Gentlemen  of  the 
Congress,  which  I  have  performed  in  thus  addressing  you. 
There  are,  it  may  be,  many  mouths  of  fiery  trial  and  sacrifice 
ahead  of  us.  It  is  a  fearful  thing  to  lead  this  great  peaceful 
people  into  war,  into  the  most  terrible  and  disastrous  of  all 
wars,  civilization  itself  seeming  to  be  in  the  balance.  But  the 
right  is  more  precious  than  peace,  and  we  shall  fight  for  the 
things  which  we  have  always  carried  nearest  our  hearts. 
.  .  .  To  such  a  task  we  can  dedicate  our  lives  and  our 
fortunes,  everything  that  we  are  and  everything  that  w^e  have, 
with  the  pride  of  those  who  know  that  the  day  has  come  when 
America  is  privileged  to  spend  her  blood  and  her  might  for 
the  principles  that  gave  her  birth  and  happiness  and  the 
peace  which  she  has  treasured.  God  helping  her,  she  can  do 
no  other. ' ' 


THE  ANSWER  OF  THE  CONGRESS  OF  THE 
L^^TED  STATES 

''Whereas,  The  Imperial  German  Government  has  com- 
mitted repeated  acts  of  war  against  the  Government  and  the 
People  of  the  L^nited  States  of  America ;  therefore  be  it 

*^ Resolved,  hy  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives 
of  the  United  States  of  America,  in  Congress  assembled,  That 
the  state  of  war  between  the  United  States  and  the  Imperial 
German  Government  which  has  thus  been  thrust  upon  the 
United  States  is  hereby  formally  declared ;  and  that  the 
President  be,  and  he  is  hereby,  authorized  and  directed  to 
employ  the  entire  naval  and  military  forces  of  the  United 
States  and  the  resources  of  the  Government  to  carry  on  war 
against  the  Imperial  German  Governinent;  and  to  bring  the 
conflict  to  a  successful  termination  all  the  resources  of  the 
country  are  hereby  pledged  by  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States." 


STATEMENT  OF  THE  ATTORNEY  GENERAL  OF  THE 
UNITED  STATES 

February  1,  1919 

On  the  occasion  of  the  dissolution  to-day  of  the  American 
Protective  League  and  the  final  termination  of  all  of  its  activ- 
ities, I  take  the  opportunity  to  express  to  its  National 
Directors  and  all  other  officers  and  members  my  personal 
thanks  for  their  assistance  to  me  and  to  my  Department  dur- 
ing the  period  of  the  war.  I  am  frank  to  say  that  the 
Department  of  Justice  could  not  have  accomplished  its  task 
and  attained  the  measure  of  success  which  it  did  attain  with- 
out the  assistance  of  the  members  of  the  League. 

Your  reward  can  only  be  the  expressed  thanks  of  your 
Government.  As  the  head  of  the  Department  of  Justice, 
under  which  the  American  Protective  League  operated,  I 
render  you  such  thanks  with  sincere  pleasure.  Upon  the 
occasion  of  a  request  from  a  member  of  the  Committee  on 
the  Judiciary  of  the  House  of  Representatives  for  an  expres- 
sion of  opinion  by  me  as  to  the  adoption  of  a  joint  resolution 
by  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  extending  the  thanks 
of  Congress  to  the  members  of  the  League,  I  have  urged  in 
strong  terms  the  adoption  of  such  a  resolution,  as  one  justly 
earned  by  the  organization  during  an  extended  period  of 
devoted  and  effective  service. 

The  work  of  your  organization  will  long  be  an  inspiration 
to  all  citizens  to  render  their  full  measure  of  service  to  their 
country  according  to  her  need,  without  reward,  and  with 
abundant  zeal. 

Respectfully, 

T.  W.  Gregory 

Attorney  General 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 


"  Signed!  " 

The  one  word,  spoken  by  a  young  officer  of  the  U.  S.  Army, 
a  strip  of  paper  in  his  hand,  confirmed  to  his  associates  the 
greatest  news  the  world  has  ever  known.  It  was  the  corrected 
foreword  of  peace.  The  armistice  had  validly  been  signed 
by  Germany. 

In  these  first  days  of  peace,  the  streets  were  full  of  shout- 
ing, laughing,  weeping  men  and  women  gone  primitive.  The 
sane  and  sober  population  of  America,  engaged  in  sending 
a  third  of  a  million  men  a  month  to  join  the  two  millions 
on  the  front  in  France,  turned  into  a  mob.  Their  frenzy 
was  that  of  joy.    The  war  was  over. 

On  the  day  following  the  confirmation  of  the  armistice, 
some  who  had  sat  together  in  a  certain  room  in  Washington 
were  scattered.  Six  thousand  resignations  of  Army  officers 
were  handed  in  within  twenty-four  hours.  The  room  in 
which  the  news  of  the  war's  end  was  thus  received  was  one 
in  the  Military  Intelligence  Division  of  the  General  Staff  in 
Washington.  There  lie  the  secrets  of  the  Army.  All  in  that 
room  were  officers  of  the  Army,  or  soon  to  be  such.  All 
were  volunteers.  I  may  with  propriety  say  that  for  a  time  I 
had  sat  with  those  who  had  ear  to  the  secret  voices  of  the 
world,  in  the  tensest  atmosphere  I  ever  knew. 

It  was  whispers  that  "  M.  I.  D."  heard  —  the  whispers  of 
perfidious  men,  communicating  one  with  the  other,  plotting 
against  the  peace  of  America,  the  dignity  of  our  Govern- 
ment, the  sacredness  of  our  flag,  the  safety  of  American 
lives  and  property.  Here  sat  the  authorized  agents  of  the 
Army,  employed  to  hear  such  whispers,  enlisted  to  catch  the 
most  skilled  and  unscrupulous  spies  the  world  has  ever 
known,  the  agents  of  a  treacherous  and  dishonorable  enemy. 

All  those  connected  with  the  Military  Intelligence  Divi- 
sion daily  felt  also  the  touch  of  this  great,  silent,  smooth- 

11 


12  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

running  machinery  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  whose  gov- 
ernmental mission  it  was  to  do  detective  work  on  the  largest 
scale  this  country  ever  knew.  We  heard  the  voice  of  the 
War  College  through  the  official  liaison  therewith ;  also  those 
of  the  General  Staff,  the  War  Department,  the  Post  Office 
Department,  the  cable  censors,  the  censors  of  the  Expedi- 
tionary Forces.  It  all  worked  as  an  interlocking,  vast,  silent 
machine  —  a  solemnly,  almost  mournfully  silent  machine,  of 
which  America  knows  almost  nothing,  the  rest  of  the  world 
nothing  at  all. 

Day  by  day,  in  ghostly  silhouette,  passed  sinister  figures, 
themselves  silent;  those  who  plotted  against  America.  All 
the  deeds  that  can  come  from  base  and  sordid  motives,  from 
low,  degenerate  and' perverted  minds;  all  the  misguided  phe- 
nomena of  human  avarice  and  hate  and  eagerness  to  destroy 
and  kill  —  such  were  the  pictures  on  the  walls  of  *'  M.  I.  D.'* 

I  have  spoken  of  certain  essential  liaisons  against  espion- 
age and  propaganda.  More  often  seen  than  any  other  ini- 
tials in  the  desk  algebra  of  '*  M.  I.  D."  were  three  initials  — 
"  A.  P.  L."  This  or  that  information  came  from  A.  P.  L. 
This  was  referred  to  A.  P.  L.  for  more  light.  Every  ques- 
tionnaire of  a  man  applying  for  a  commission  in  the  Army 
was  referred  back  to  A.  P.  L.,  and  A.  P.  L.  took  up  the 
question  of  his  unswerving  and  invincible  loyalty.  A.  P.  L. 
found  slackers  and  deserters  in  thousands.  A,  P.  L.  found 
this  or  that  spy,  large  or  little.  A.  P.  L.,  obviously,  had  a 
busy  mind  and  a  long  arm. 

Yet  if  you  should  look  in  the  Governmental  Blue  Book 
for  this  powerful  branch  of  our  Government,  you  could  not 
find  the  initials  there  at  all.  Very  many  Americans  never 
heard  the  name  of  this  wholly  unofficial  organization  which 
passed  on  so  many  governmental  questions,  was  of  so  much 
aid  in  so  many  ways  to  the  Government.  A.  P.  L,  is  not  and 
never  was  a  part  of  any  state  or  national  arm,  service,  de- 
partment, or  bureau.  But  openly  and  proudly  it  has  always 
been  definitely  authorized  to  carry  on  all  its  letter-heads, 
''  Organized  with  the  Approval  and  Operating  under  the 
Direction  of  the  United  States  Department  of  Justice,  Bu- 
reau of  Investigation."     These  are  its  credentials. 

A.  P.  L.,  the  mj^sterious  power  behind  our  Government, 
was  no  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision,  as  hundreds  of  Germans 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE  13 

and  pro-Germans  can  testify  through  their  prison  bars;  but 
it  passes  now  and  soon  will  ''  leave  not  a  wrack  behind." 
As  these  pages  advance,  the  word  issues  for  its  official  de- 
mobilization. It  was  honorably  encamped  on  a  secret  and 
silent  battlefield,  but  now,  once  more  to  use  a  poet's  word, 
it  has  "  folded  its  tents  like  the  Arab,  and  silently  stolen 
away."  It  was,  and  is  not.  You  never  have  known  what 
it  was.    You  never  will  see  its  like  again. 

*'  A.  P.  L."  means  the  American  Protective  League.  It 
means  a  silent,  unknown  army  of  more  than  a  quarter  mil- 
lion of  the  most  loyal  and  intelligent  citizens  of  America, 
who  indeed  did  spring  to  arms  over  night.  It  fought  battles, 
saved  lives,  saved  cities,  saved  treasures,  defended  the  flag, 
apprehended  countless  traitors,  did  its  own  tremendous  share 
in  the  winning  of  the  war.  It  saved  America.  It  did  protect. 
It  was  a  league. 

It  did  all  this  without  a  cent  of  pay.  It  had  no  actual 
identification  with  the  Government.  Yet  it  has  won  scores 
of  times  the  written  and  spoken  thanks  of  our  most  respon- 
sible Government  officials.  Its  aid  in  the  winning  of  the  war 
can  not  be  estimated  and  never  will  be  known.  Not  even 
its  full  romance  ever  can  be  written.  May  these  hurrying 
pages  save  all  these  things  at  least  in  part,  though  done  in 
the  full  consciousness  that  their  tribute  can  be  but  a  frag- 
ment of  the  total  due. 

The  American  Protective  League  was  the  largest  company 
of  detectives  the  world  ever  saw.  The  members  served 
without  earlier  specialized  training,  without  pay,  without 
glory.  That  band  of  citizens,  called  together  overnight,  rose, 
grew  and  gathered  strength  until  able  to  meet,  and  abso- 
lutely to  defeat,  the  vast  and  highly  trained  army  of  the 
German  espionage  system,  which  in  every  country  of  the 
globe  flooded  the  laud  with  trained  spies  who  had  made  a 
life  business  of  spying.  It  met  that  German  Army  as  ours 
met  it  at  Chateau-Thierry,  and  in  the  Argonne,  and  on  the 
Yesle  and  on  the  Aisne.  Like  to  our  Army  under  arms  — 
that  Army  where  any  of  us  would  have  preferred  to  serve 
had  it  been  possible  for  us  to  serve  under  arms  —  it  never 
gave  back  an  inch  of  ground.  Growing  stronger  and  better 
equipped  each  day,  it  worked  always  onward  and  forward 
until  the  last  fight  was  won. 


14  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

A.  P.  L.  has  folded  its  unseen  and  unknown  tents.  It  will 
bivouac  elsewhere  until  another  day  of  need  may  come.  Then, 
be  sure,  it  will  be  ready.  On  the  day  that  the  American  Pro- 
tective League  disbanded,  it  had  no  money  in  the  treasury. 
It  had  spent  millions  of  dollars,  and  had  brought  to  judg- 
ment three  million  cases  of  disloyalty.  There,  obviously,  un- 
written and  unknown,  scattered  in  every  city  and  hamlet  of 
America,  was  a  tremendous  story,  one  of  the  greatest  of  all 
war  stories,  the  story  of  the  line  behind  the  guns. 

When  the  men  of  long  or  of  transient  connection  with 
M.  I.  D.  had  shaken  hands  and  said  good-bye,  the  National 
Directors  of  the  American  Protective  League  asked  me  to 
stop  on  and  write  the  history  of  the  American  Protective 
League.  And  so,  in  large  part,  as  a  matter  of  loyalty  and 
duty,  with  millions  of  pages  of  records  at  hand,  with  a  quar- 
ter of  a  million  friends  I  have  never  seen,  who  never  have 
seen  one  another,  who  never  otherwise  would  know  the  iden- 
tity of  one  another,  I  began  to  do  something  which  most 
obviously  and  certainly  ought  to  be  done.  This  book  is  writ- 
ten alike  that  these  quarter  million  unpaid  soldiers  may 
know  of  one  another,  and  that  a  hundred  million  Americans 
may  also  know  of  them  accurately,  and  thank  them  for  what 
they  did. 

Before  I  had  done  the  last  page  of  the  strange  history,  I 
knew  that  I  had  felt  an  actual  reflex  of  the  actual  America. 
I  knew  that  I  had  been  in  touch  with  one  of  the  most  astonish- 
ing phenomena  of  modern  days,  in  touch  also  with  the  most 
tremendous,  the  most  thrilling  and  the  most  absorbing  story 
of  which  I  ever  knew. 


EMERSON  HOUGH 


Washington 
District  of  Columbia 
United  States  of  America 
February  14,  1919. 


CONTENTS 
Book  I :    The  League  and  Its  Work 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    The  Awakening  19 

II    The  Web    29 

III     Early  Days  of  the  League 38 

TV    The  League  in  Washington 44 

V  The  Law  and  Its  New  Teeth 55 

VI     German  Propaganda  62 

YII     The  German  Spy  Cases 82 

VIII     The  Spy  Himself 107 

IX    Handling  Bad  Aliens 120 

X    The  Great  I.  W.  W.  Trial 133 

XI    The  Slacker  Raids 141 

XII     Skulker  Chasing  148 

XIII    Arts  of  the  Operatives 163 

Book  II:     The  Tales  of  the  Cities 

I     The  Story  of  Chicago   179 

II     The  Story  of  New  York    199 

III  The  Story  of  Philadelphia 210 

IV  The  Story  of  Newark 226 

V  The  Story  of  Pittsburgh 239 

VI    The  Story  of  Boston 246 

VII     The  Story  of  Clevet.and    256 

VIII     The  Story  of  Cincinnati 267 

IX     The  Story  of  Dayton 276 

X     The  Story  of  Detroit   285 

XI    The  Story  of  St.  Louis 293 

XII     The  Story  of  Kansas  City   303 

XIII  The  Story  of  Minneapolis   310 

XIV  The  Story  of  New  Orleans   324 

XV    The  Story  of  California , 332 


Contents 
Book  III:     The  Four  Winds 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  The  Story  of  the  East    363 

II  The  Story  of  the  North    381 

III  The  Story  of  the  South    418 

IV  The  Story  of  the  West   438 

Book  IV:     America 

I     The  Reckoning 453 

II     The  Peace  Table 473 

Appendices 483 


BOOK  I 

THE  LEAGUE  AND  ITS  WORK 


THE  WEB 


CHAPTER  I 

THE   AWAKENING 

The  "Neutral  Cases" —  First  Realization  of  the  German 
Spy  System  in  America  —  Overcrowding  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice  —  The  Birth  of  a  New  Idea  —  Formation 
of  the  American  Protective  League,  Civilian  Auxiliary  — 
Astonishing  Growth  of  the  Greatest  Semi-Vigilante  Move- 
ment of  the  World. 

We  Americans  have  always  been  disposed  to  peace.  We 
have  not  planned  for  w^ar.  Our  Army  has  never  been  a 
menace  to  ourselves  or  to  any  other  nation;  our  Navy% 
though  strong  and  modern,  never  has  been  larger  than  a 
country  of  our  extent  in  territory  andj  industry  admittedly 
ought  to  have.  No  one  has  feared  us,  and  there  has  been 
none  of  w^hom  we  have  had  any  fear.  We  have  designedly 
stood  aloof  from  entangling  alliances.  The  tw^o  great 
oceans  traditionally  have  been  our  friends,  for  they  have 
set  us  apart  from  the  w^orld's  quarrels.  An  America,  far 
off,  new,  rich,  abounding,  a  land  where  a  man  might  be 
free  to  grow  to  his  natural  stature,  where  he  might  be  safe 
at  his  own  fireside,  where  he  might  select  his  own  rulers 
and  rest  always  secure  under  his  ow^n  form  of  government 
— that  w^as  the  theory  of  this  country  and  of  this  form  of 
government.  That  w^as  the  reason  w^hy  this  country,  natur- 
ally endowed  above  any  other  region  of  the  world,  has 
gro^vn  so  marvelously  fast. 

There  was  reason  for  America's  swift  stature.  She  was 
a  land  not  of  war,  but  of  peace.  Rich,  she  threw  open  her 
doors.  Frank,  free,  honest,  generous,  she  made  welcome 
all  who  came.     She  suspected  none,  trusted  all,  and  to 

19 


20  THE  WEB 

prove  this,  offered  partnership  in  her  wealth  to  any  man 
of  the  world,  under  a  system  of  naturalization  laws  whose 
like,  in  broadness  and  gcnerosit}^  does  not  exist.  Peace — 
and  the  chance  to  grow  and  to  be  happy.  Peace — and  a 
partnership  in  all  she  had.  Peace — and  a  seat  free  at  the 
richest  table  of  the  Avorld.  That  was  what  America 
offered ;  and  in  spite  of  the  pinch  and  the  unrest  of  grow- 
ing numbers,  in  spite  of  problems  importedi  and  not  native 
to  our  long-untroubled  land,  that  was  the  theory  of  Ameri- 
can life  up  to  a  date  four  years  earlier  than  this. 

In  that  four  years  America  has  changed  more  than  in 
any  forty  of  her  earlier  life.  But  yesterday,  young,  rich, 
laughing,  free  of  care,  Homerically  mirthful  and  joyous, 
America  to-day  is  mature,  unsmiling,  grave,  dignified — and 
wise.  What  once  she  never  suspected,  now  she  knows. 
She  has  been  betrayed. 

But  America,  traditionally  resourceful,  now  suddenly 
agonized  in  the  discovery  of  treachery  at  her  own  table, 
has  out  of  the  very  anguish  of  her  indignant  horror,  out 
of  the  very  need  of  the  hour,  suddenly  and  adequately 
risen  to  her  emergency.  She  always  has  done  so.  When 
the  arms  of  the  appointed  agents  of  the  law  ever  have 
wearied,  she  has  upheld  them.  She  has  done  so  now,  at  the 
very  moment  of  our  country's  greatest  need. 

The  story  of  hoAv  that  was  done ;  how  the  very  force  of 
the  situation  demanded  and  received  an  instant  and  suffi- 
cient answer ;  how  the  civilians  rallied  to  their  own  flag ; 
how  they  came  out  of  private  life  unasked,  unsummoned, 
as  though  at  spoken  command  of  some  central  power — 
that  is  a  great  and  splendid  story  of  which  few  ever  have 
known  anything  at  all. 

It  is  a  great  and  splendid  story  because  it  verifies 
America  and  her  intent  before  all  the  high  courts  of 
things.  These  men  did  obey  the  summons  of  a  vast  central 
power.  But  it  was  no  more  than  the  soul  of  America  that 
spoke.  It  was  no  more  than  her  theory  of  the  democracy 
of  mankind  which  issued  that  unwritten  order  to  assemble 
the  minute  men,  each  armed  and  garbed  in  his  own  way 
and  each  resolved  to  do  what  he  could  in  a  new  and  tre- 
mendous day  of  Lexington. 

It  was  not  autocracy  which  gave  the  assembly  call  to 


THE  AWAKENING  21 

these  silent  legions.  They  mobilized  themselves,  so  rapidly 
as  to  offer  one  of  the  most  curious  psychological  problems 
of  history.  Why  did  these  men  leave  their  homes  almost 
all  at  once,  each  unknown  at  first  to  the  other,  in  large 
part  each  unknown  to  the  other  even  now?  How  did  it 
come  about  that  an  army  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  men 
enlisted  themselves  and  then  offered  their  services  to  a 
government  which  needed  them  but  never  had  asked  for 
them?  How  did  it  come  that — contrary  to  all  European 
traditions — this  tremendous  striking-power  began  at  the 
bottom  in  our  democratic  war-born  instinct,  and  worked 
upward  into  the  Government  itself,  as  a  new  institution, 
wholly  unrecognized  in  the  constitution  of  state  or  nation? 
Usualh'  the  Government  issues  the  order  for  mobilization. 
But  here  the  greatest  band  of  minute  men  ever  known  in 
the  world  mobilized  as  though  unconsciously,  as  though 
to  some  spiritual  trumpet  call.  Having  done  so,  it  oft>red 
itself  to  the  Nation's  heads,  saying,  "Here  we  are.  Take 
us  and  use  us.  We  ask  no  pay.  We  enlist  till  tlie  end  of 
tlie  tear." 

It  was  the  spirit  voice  of  anguished  America  which  mo- 
bilized the  American  Protective  League.  There  never  was 
a  time  when  America  could  lose  this  war.  The  answer  was 
always  written  in  the  stars.  Somewhere,  high  up  in  the 
heavens,  blind  Justice  let  fall  her  sword  in  a  gesture  of 
command;  and  that  was  all.  The  issue  of  the  war  was 
determined  from  that  moment.  It  was  certain  that  Ger- 
many, brutal,  bloody,  autocratic,  destructive,  would  be  de- 
feated beyond  the  sea.     Yes,  and  on  this  side  of  the  sea. 

On  this  side,  much  was  to  be  done,  more  than  Ave  had 
dreamed.  Troubled  but  unparticipating,  we  stood  aloof 
and  watched  the  soil  of  all  Europe  redden  with  the  blood 
of  men — and  of  women  and  children.  Even  we  still  stood 
aloof,  hands  clenched,  gasping  in  an  enraged  incredulity, 
watching  the  sea  also — the  free  and  open  highway  of  the 
world,  redden  with  the  blood  of  men — and  of  women  and 
children.  But  still  we  took  no  part,  though  indeed  some 
of  our  young  men  could  no  longer  stay  at  home  and  so 
enlisted  under  some  Allied  flag. 

We  held  in  mind  our  ancient  remoteness  from  all  this. 
We  heard  still  the  counsel  against  entangling  alliances. 


22  THE  WEB 

And,  quite  aside  from  the  idea  of  material  profit,  we  tried 
to  be  fair  and  impartial  in  a  fight  that  was  not  yet  ours, 
though  every  American  heart  bled  with  France  and  Bel- 
gium, ached  in  pain  with  that  of  Britain,  locked  in  death 
grapple  in  her  greatest  war — that  which  must  name  her 
still  free  or  forever  enslaved.  And  from  Washington  came 
admonition  to  be  calm.  President  Wilson's  appeal  went 
out  again  and  again  to  the  people,  and  whether  or  not  it 
ever  once  seemed  to  all  of  us  a  possible  thing  for  the 
United  States  to  keep  out  of  this  war,  at  least  we  sought 
to  do  so  and  were  advised  and  commanded  to  do  so  by  the 
chief  of  our  o\ati  forces. 

Whether  or  not  we  all  wished  to  be  neutral  so  many 
years,  we  officially  and  nationally  were  neutral.  There- 
fore we  retained  our  commercial  rights  under  neutrality. 
Doing  no  more  than  Germany  always  previously  had  done, 
we  made  and  sold  arms  and  munitions  in  the  open  markets 
of  the  world. 

But  Germany  could  not  come  and  get  her  arms  and  muni- 
tions had  she  wished  to  do  so.  Great  Britain  had  some- 
thing to  say  about  that.  Wherefore  Germany  hated  us, 
secretly  and  openly — hated  us  for  doing  what  she  once  had 
done  but  could  no  longer  do. 

The  enforcement  of  blockade  made  Germany  hate  us. 
Germany's  psychology  has  always  been  double-faced — one 
face  for  herself  and  one  for  the  rest  of  the  world.  The 
Austrian  double-headed  eagle  belongs  of  right  also  on  the 
German  coat  of  arms.  ^'What  I  do  not  wish  to  have  done 
to  me  is  Wrong;  what  I  wish  to  do  to  others  is  Right!" 
That  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  German  public  creed 
and  the  German  private  character — and  now  we  fairly 
may  say  we  know  them  both.  The  German  is  not  a  sports- 
man— he  does  not  know  the  meaning  of  that  word.  He 
has  not  in  his  language  any  word  meaning  "fair  play." 
Nothing  is  fair  play  to  a  German  which  does  not  work  to 
his  advantage.  The  American  neutrality  in  combination 
with  the  British  blockade  did  not  work  to  his  advantage. 
Hence — so  he  thought — it  was  all  wrong. 

The  Germans  began  to  hate  America  more  and  more. 
We  did  not  know,  at  that  time,  that  Germany  had  been 
planning    many    years    for    ''diesen    aufunsangehangten 


THE  AWAKENING  23 

Krieg" — ''this  war  forced  on  us!"  We  did  not  have  any 
idea  that  she  had  counted  upon  two  million  German- Ameri- 
cans to  help  her  win  this  war;  that  she  knew  every  nook 
and  cranny  of  the  United  States  and  had  them  mapped; 
that  for  years  she  had  maintained  a  tremendous  organiza- 
tion of  spies  who  had  learned  every  vulnerable  point  of 
the  American  defenses,  who  were  better  acquainted  with 
our  Army  than  Ave  ourselves  were,  and  who  had  extended 
their  covert  activities  to  a  degree  which  left  them  arro- 
gantly confident  of  their  success  at  war,  and  contemptuous 
of  the  best  that  America  ever  could  do  against  her.  Ger- 
many never  doubted  that  she  w^ould  win  this  war.  It  was 
charted  and  plotted  out  many  years  in  advance,  move  by 
move,  step  by  step,  clear  through  to  the  bloody  and  brutal 
end  which  should  leave  Germany  commander  of  the  world. 

Now,  in  the  German  general  plan  of  conquest,  America 
had  had  her  place  assigned  to  her.  So  long  as  she  would 
remain  passive  and  complaisant — so  long  as  she  would 
furnish  munitions  to  Germany  and  not  to  England  or 
France  or  Russia,  all  well,  all  very  good.  But  when,  by 
any  shift  of  the  play,  America  might  furnish  supplies  to 
Germany's  enemies  and  not  to  Germany — no  matter 
through  whose  fault — then  so  much  the  worse  for  America ! 
It  never  was  intended  that  America  should  be  anything 
but  expansion  ground  for  Germany,  whether  or  not  she 
remained  complaisant.  But  if  she  did  not — if  she  began 
in  her  own  idea  of  neutrality  to  transgress  Germany's  two- 
headed  idea  of  ''neutrality" — that  meant  immediate  and 
positive  action  against  America,  now,  to-day,  and  not  after 
a  while  and  at  Germany's  greater  leisure. 

"I  shall  have  no  foolishness  from  America!"  said  Wil- 
liam Hohenzollern  to  the  accredited  representative  of  this 
country  in  his  court — William  Hohenzollern,  that  same 
pitiable  figure  who  at  the  final  test  of  defeat  had  not  the 
courage  of  Saul  to  fall  on  his  sword,  not  the  courage  of 
a  real  King  to  die  at  the  head  of  his  army,  but  who  fled 
from  his  army  like  a  coward  when  he  saw  all  was  lost — 
even  honor.  His  threat  of  a  million  Germans  in  America 
who  would  rise  against  us  was  not  ill-based.  They  were 
here.  They  are  here  now,  to-day.  The  reply  to  that  threat, 
made  by  Gerard,  is  historic.    "Majesty,  let  them  rise.    We 


24  THE  WEB 

have  a  million  lamp-posts  waiting  for  them."  And  this 
herein  tells  the  story  of  how  the  million  traitors  at 
America's  too  generous  table  were  shown  the  lamp-posts 
looming. 

The  German  anger  at  America  grew  to  the  fury  point, 
and  she  began  covertly  to  stir  herself  on  this  side  the  sea. 
The  rustling  of  the  leaves  began  to  be  audible,  the  hiss- 
ing grew  unmistakable.  But  America,  resting  on  her  old 
traditions,  paid  no  attention.  We  heard  with  sympathy 
for  a  time  the  classic  two-faced  German- American's  wail, 
^ '  Germany  is  my  mother,  America  my  wife !  How  can  T 
fight  my  mother?"  The  truth  is  that  all  too  many  German- 
Americans  never  cared  for  America  at  all  in  any  tender 
or  reverent  way.  Resting  under  their  Kaiser's  Delbrueck 
injunction  never  to  forget  the  fatherland,  they  never  were 
anything  but  German.  They  used  America ;  they  never 
loved  her.  They  clung  to  their  old  language,  their  old 
customs,  and  cared  nothing  for  ours.  They  prospered, 
because  they  Avould  live  as  Ave  would  not  live.  It  would 
be  wrong  to  call  them  all  bad,  and  folly  to  call  them  all 
good.  As  a  class  they  Avere  clannish  beyond  all  other 
races  coming  here.  Many  Avho  at  first  were  openly  pro- 
German  became  more  discreet ;  but  of  countless  numbers 
of  these,  it  is  well  ImoAvn  that  at  their  own  firesides  and 
in  supposed  secrecy  they  privately  were  German,  although 
in  public  they  were  American.  Of  Liberty  bond  buyers, 
many  of  the  loudest  boasters  Avere  of  this  **  loyal  German- 
American  citizenship."  They  really  had  not  earned  even 
the  hyphen. 

Open  and  covert  action  Avas  taken  by  Germany  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic  to  bring  America  into  line.  Not  fear- 
ing America,  nor  knoAving  the  real  America  at  all,  Ger- 
many did  much  as  she  liked.  Outrages  on  the  high  seas 
began.  All  international  laAv  Avas  cast  aside  by  Germany 
as  fully  as  in  her  invasion  of  Belgium.  She  counted  so 
surely  on  success  and  Avorld-conquest  that  she  Avas  abso- 
lutely arrogant  and  indifferent  alike  to  laAv  and  to  human- 
ity. The  militaristic  Germany  began  to  show — brutal, 
crafty,  bestial,  lacking  in  all  honor,  ignorant  of  the  Avord 
''fair  play,"  callous  to  every  appeal  of  humanity,  wholly 
and  unscrupulously  selfish.     We  began  now  to  see  the 


THE  AWAKENING  25 

significance  of  that  ''efficiency"  of  which  our  industrial 
captains  sometimes  had  prated  over-much.  Yes,  Germany- 
was  efficient ! 

The  strain  between  the  two  countries  increased  as  the 
blockade  tightened,  and  as  the  counter-plot  of  the  German 
submarines  developed.  Then  came  the  Lusitania.  .  .  . 
I  can  not  write  of  that.  I  have  hated  Germany  since  then, 
and  thousands  of  loyal  Americans  join  in  hatred  for  her. 
All  of  good  America  has  been  at  war  with  her  at  heart 
from  that  very  day,  because  in  America  we  never  have 
made  war  on  women  and  children.  We  are  bound  by 
every  instinct  to  hate  any  nation  that  does,  Turk,  German 
or  ignorant  savage. 

The  Lusitania  was  Germany's  deliberate  action.  She 
arrogantly  commanded  us  in  a  few  newspaper  advertise- 
ments not  to  sail  on  the  Lusitania — as  though  she  owned 
us  and  the  sea.  After  the  deed,  she  struck  medals  in  com- 
memoration of  it.  German  church  bells  rang  to  glorify  it. 
A  German  holiday  was  created  to  celebrate  it.  German 
preachers  there  and  in  America  preached  sermons  lauding 
it.  It  was  a  national  act,  nationally  planned,  nationally 
ratified.  From  that  day  we  were  at  war.  Let  those  who 
like,  of  whatever  station,  say  ''We  are  not  at  war  with 
the  German  people."  That  is  not  true.  The  German 
people,  the  German  rank  and  file,  not  their  leaders  alone, 
were  back  of  all  these  deeds  and  ratified  them  absolutely 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 

From  that  day,  too,  the  issue  might  really  have  been 
known.  I  went  into  the  elevator  of  a  building  in  my  city, 
a  copy  of  a  newspaper  in  my  hand  with  the  black  headline 
of  the  Lusitania  across  the  page.  The  German  operator  of 
the  elevator  saw  it  as  I  turned  it  toward  him  silently. 
"Veil,  they  vere  varned!"  he  said,  and  grinned. 

That  incident  shows  Germany  in  America,  then  and  now, 
covert,  sinister,  sneering,  confident,  exultant.  You  could 
not  find  an  answer  you  would  dare  speak  to  such  a  man. 
There  is  no  deed  that  you  could  do.  I  pulled  together,  and 
only  said,  "It  will  cost  Germany  the  war."    And  so  it  did. 

But  we  did  not  go  to  war;  we  tried  to  keep  out  of  the 
w^ar.  The  daily  page  of  red  horrors  fresh  from  Europe 
taught   us   what   war   meant   at   this   day   of  the   world. 


26  THE  WEB 

Women  naturally  did  not  like  the  thought  of  casting  their 
sons  into  that  brutal  hell.  And  then  arose  the  female-men, 
the  pacifists,  forgetting  their  sex,  forgetting  their  country, 
forgetting  the  large  and  lasting  game  of  humanity's  good, 
which  cannot  count  present  cost,  but  must  plan  for  the 
long  game  of  the  centuries. 

With  the  pacifists  suddenly  and  silently  rose  the  hidden 
army  of  German  espionage  and  German  sympath}^  in  our 
own  country,  quick  to  see  that  here  was  their  chance ! 
Millions  of  German  gold  now  came  pouring  across  to 
finance  this  break  in  America's  forces.  Her  high  ministers 
to  our  Government  began  their  treachery,  forgetful  of  all 
ambassadorial  honor,  perjuring  themselves  and  their  coun- 
try.   The  war  was  on,  on  both  sides  the  Atlantic  now. 

And  still  America  did  not  knoAv,  and  still  America  did 
not  go  to  war.  We  dreaded  it,  held  back  from  it,  month 
after  month — some,  as  it  seems  to  many,  wrongly  and 
unhappily  even  did  what  they  could  to  capitalize  the  fact 
that  we  were  not  at  war.  But  the  hidden  serpent  raised 
its  head  and  began  to  strike — to  strike  so  openly,  in  so 
long  a  series  of  overt  acts,  that  now  our  civil  courts  and 
the  great  national  machinery  of  justice  in  Washington 
became  literally  helpless  in  their  endeavors  at  resistance. 

We  were  not  at  war,  but  war  was  waged  against  us  in 
so  many  ways — against  our  lives  and  property — that  all 
sense  of  security  was  gone.  We  offered  as  our  defense 
not,  as  yet,  our  Fleet  or  our  Army,  but  our  Department 
of  Justice.  Day  and  night  that  department  at  Washing- 
ton, and  its  branches  in  all  the  great  cities,  in  New  York, 
Chicago,  Boston,  Baltimore,  Philadelphia,  San  Francisco, 
labored  to  clear  the  constantly  increasing  dockets,  to  keep 
down  the  constantly  increasing  heaps  of  suspect  cases.  It 
was  evident  that  America  was  hearing  from  the  Kaiser's 
million  Germans  in  America.  But  where  were  the  lamp 
posts  ? 

The  Department  of  Justice  found  itself  floo-ded  and  sub- 
merged with  work  in  the  Bureau  of  Investigation,  collect- 
ing evidence  against  German  spies  and  German  law- 
breakers. It  was  plain  what  efforts  now  were  making  to 
undermine  America.  But  the  truth  was,  the  grist  was  too 
much  for  the  mill.     We  had  never  organized  a  system  to 


THE  AWAKENING  27 

handle  covert  and  hidden  war  as  Germany  had  done.  We 
had  fought  in  the  open  when,  rarely,  we  had  fought  at  all. 
The  great  mill  of  Justice  clogged  up  and  broke  down,  not 
from  any  inefficiency  or  inadequacy  in  average  times,  but 
because  it  never  could  have  been  predicted  that  ** Neutral- 
ity Cases"  such  as  these  ever  would  be  known  in  our 
history.  In  this  war,  giant  figures  only  have  ruled.  The 
world  was  not  prepared  for  them. 

The  outrages  went  on.  Germany,  confident  of  the  suc- 
cess of  ruthless  submarine  warfare,  told  us  when  we  could 
sail,  how  we  must  mark  our  ships — said,  sneeringly,  "Veil, 
you  vas  varned!" 

It  had  very  early  become  plain  to  all  Americans  that  we 
could  not  always  submit  to  this.  More  and  more  now  we 
were  browbeaten  and  insulted.  More  and  more  also  our 
hearts  were  wrung  at  the  sight  of  splendid  Prance,  fighting 
gamely  and  proudly  and  silently  for  her  life;  at  the  lists 
of  the  gallant  British  dead;  the  whole  story  of  the  stag- 
gering lines  of  Liberty.  It  was  plain  that  the  great  prize 
of  free  institutions,  of  human  liberty  itself,  was  about  to 
be  lost  to  the  world  forever.  It  became  plain  that  the 
glorious  traditions  of  America  must  perish,  that  her  answer 
to  humanity  must  be  forever  stilled,  that  she,  too,  must  be 
included  in  the  ruin  of  all  the  good  things  of  iUe  world. 
It  began  also  to  be  said  more  and  more  openly  that 
America  would  come  next — that  we  must  fight ;  if  not  now, 
then  at  some  later  day,  and  perhaps  without  these  Allies. 

So  our  war  spirit  began  in  the  total  to  outweigh  and 
overtop  our  peace  spirit  and  our  pacifist  spirit  and  our 
hesitant  spirit.  We  knew  we  would  be  at  war.  Many  of 
us  deplored  and  do  still  deplore  the  fact  that  we  waited 
so  long  in  times  so  perilous.  We  lost  two  precious  years; 
billions  in  treasure,  and  what  is  immeasurably  worse,  mil- 
lions in  lives.     So  much  for  hesitancy. 

But  now,  as  bearing  upon  the  purpose  of  this  account 
of  the  American  Protective  League,  it  is  to  be  kept  in 
mind  that  for  months  and  years  the  Department  of  Justice 
had  been  at  war  with  the  hidden  German  army  here.  And, 
as  the  Germans  were  pushing  back  the  Allies  over  there, 
they  were  pushing  us  back  here,  because  we  were  not  ready 
for  so  unforeseen  a  situation. 


28  THE  WEB 

What  saves  a  country  in  its  need  ?  Its  loyal  men.  What 
reinforces  an  army  called  on  for  sudden  enlargement  ?  Its 
volunteers.  What  savedi  San  Francisco  in  its  days  of  riot 
and  anarchy  in  1850?  Its  Volunteers  for  law  and  order. 
What  brought  peace  to  Alder  Gulch  in  1863  when  criminals 
ruled  ?  Its  Volunteers  for  law  and  order.  America  always 
has  had  Volunteers  to  fight  for  law  and  order  against 
criminals.  The  law  itself  says  you  may  arrest  without 
warrant  a  man  caught  committing  a  felony.  The  line  be- 
tween formal  written  law  and  natural  law  is  but  thin 
at  best. 

There  was,  therefore,  in  the  spring  of  1917  in  America, 
the  greatest  menace  to  our  country  we  ever  had  known. 
Organized  criminals  were  in  a  thousand  ways  attacking 
our  institutions,  jeopardizing  the  safety,  the  very  continu- 
ity of  our  country.  No  loyal  American  was  safe.  We 
did  not  know  who  were  the  disloyal  Americans.  We  faced 
an  army  of  masked  men.  They  outnumbered  us.  We  had 
no  machinery  of  defense  adequate  to  fight  them,  because 
w^e  foolishly  had  thought  that  all  these  whom  Ave  had  wel- 
comed and  fed  were  honest  in  their  protestations — and 
tlieir  oaths — when  they  came  to  us. 

So  now,  Ave  say,  an  imperious  cry  of  NEED  came,  AATung 
from  astounded  and  anguished  America.  It  Avas  as  though 
this  actual  cry  came  from  the  heavens,  *'I  need,  you,  my 
children  !    Help  me,  my  children ! ' ' 

That  cry  AA^as  heard.  Hoav,  it  is  of  small  importance  to 
any  member  of  the  American  Protective  League,  Avhose 
wireless  antennas,  for  the  time  attuned,  caught  doAvn  that 
silent  wireless  from  the  skies.  No  one  man  sent  that  mes- 
sage. Almost,  we  might  say,  no  one  man  ansAvered  it,  so 
many  flocked  in  after  the  first  Avord  of  ansAver.  No  one 
man  of  the  tAvo  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  Avho  first  and 
last  ansAvered  in  one  Avay  or  another  Avould  say  or  Avould 
want  to  say  that  he  alone  made  so  large  an  ansAver  to  so 
large  a  call.  None  the  less,  Ave  deal  here  Avith  actual  his- 
tory. So  that  noAv  we  may  begin  with  details,  begin  to 
show  hoAv  those  first  strands  were  Avoven  which  in  a  few 
weeks  or  months  had  grown  into  one  of  America's  strong- 
est cables  of  anchorage  against  the  terror  which  was 
abroad  upon  the  sea. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    AVEB 

Methods   of  Work  —  Getting   the   Evidence  —  The  Organ 
ization  in  Detail  —  The  Multifold  Activities  of  the  League. 

It  is  to  Mr.  A.  M.  Briggs  of  Chicago  that  credit  should 
go  for  the  initial  idea  of  the  American  Protective  League. 
The  first  flash  came  many  months  before  the  declaration 
of  war,  although,  for  reasons  outlined,  it  long  was  obvious 
that  we  must  eventually  go  to  war. 

The  Department  of  Justice  in  Chicago  was  in  a  terribly 
congested  condition,  and  long  had  been,  for  the  neutrality 
cases  were  piling  up. 

**I  could  get  ten  times  as  much  done  if  I  had  men  and 
money  to  work  with,"  said  Hint  on  G.  Clabaugh,  Superin- 
tendent of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation.  ''There  are  thou- 
sands of  men  Avho  are  enemies  of  this  country  and  ought 
to  be  behind  bars,  but  it  takes  a  spy  to  catch  a  spy,  and 
I've  got  a  dozen  spies  to  catch  a  hundred  thousand  spies 
right  here  in  Chicago.  They  have  motor  cars  against  my 
street  cars.  They're  supplied  with  all  the  money  they 
want ;  my  own  funds  are  limited.  We  're  not  at  war.  All 
this  is  civil  work.  We  simply  haven't  ways  and  means 
to  meet  this  emergency." 

"I  can  get  ten  or  twenty  good,  quiet  men  with  cars 
who'll  work  for  nothing,"  said  Mr.  Briggs  one  day. 
'*  They '11  take  either  their  business  time  or  their  leisure 
time,  or  both,  and  join  forces  with  you.  I  knoAV  we  're  not 
at  war,  but  Ave 're  all  Americans  together." 

In  that  chance  conversation — only  we  ought  not  to  call 
it  chance  at  all,  but  a  thing  foreordained — began  the  great- 
est society  the  world  ever  saw, — an  army  of  men  equipped 
with  money,  brains,  loyalty,  which  grew  into  one  of  the 
main  legions  of  our  defense.     That  army  to-day  probably 

29 


30  THE  WEB 

knows  more  about  you  and  your  affairs  than  you  ever 
thought  anyone  could  know.  If  you  w^ere  not  and  are  not 
loyal,  those  facts  are  known  and  recorded,  whether  you 
live  in  Ncav  York  or  California  or  anywhere  between. 

Once  started,  the  voluntary  service  idea  ran  like  Avild- 
fire.  It  began  as  a  free  taxicab  company,  working  for  the 
most  impeccable  and  most  dignified-  branch  of  our  Govern- 
ment— that  branch  for  w^hich  our  people  always  have  had 
the  most  respect. 

The  ten  private  cars  grew  to  two  dozen.  As  many  quiet- 
faced,  silent  drivers  as  were  necessary  were  always  ready. 
Word  passe-d  among  reliable  business  men,  and  they  came 
quietly  and  asked  what  they  could  do.  They  were  the 
best  men  of  the  city.  They  w^orked  for  principle,  not  for 
excitement,  not  in  any  vanity,  not  for  any  pay.  It  was 
the  "  live-wires  "  of  the  business  world  that  were  selected. 
They  were  all  good  men,  big  men^  brave  and  able,  else 
they  must  have  failed,  and  else  this  organization  never 
could  have  grown.  It  was  secret,  absolutely  so ;  clandestine 
absolutely,  this  organization  of  Regulators.  But  unlike  the 
Vigilantes,  the  Klu  Klux,  the  Horse-Thief  Detectors,  it  took 
no  punishments  into  its  own  hands.  It  was  absolutely  non- 
partisan. It  had  then  and  has  now  no  concern  w4th  labor 
questions  or  political  questions.  It  worked  only  as  collec- 
tor of  evidence.  It  had  no  governmental  or  legal  status 
at  all.  It  tried  no  cases,  suggested  no  remedies.  It  simply 
found  tJie  facts. 

It  became  apparent  that  the  City  of  Chicago  was  not  all 
America.  These  American  men  had  America  and  not  Chi- 
cago at  heart.  Before  long,  five  hundred  men,  in  widely 
separated  and  sometimes  overlapping  sections,  were  at 
work  piling  up  evidence  against  German  and  pro-German 
suspects.  These  men  began  to  enlist  under  them  yet  others. 
The  thing  was  going  swiftly,  unaccountably  swiftly. 
America's  volunteers  were  pouring  out.  The  Minute  Men 
w^ere  afoot  again,  ready  to  fight. 

This  was  in  March  of  1917.  Even  yet  we  were  not  at 
war,  though  in  the  two  years  following  the  Lusitania  mur- 
ders, the  world  had  had  more  and  more  proof  of  Germany's 
heartless  and  dishonorable  intentions.  The  snake  was  now 
out  of  the  leaves.     The  issue  was  joined.     We  all  knew 


THE  WEB  31 

that  Washington  soon  would,  soon  must,  declare  war.  The 
country  was  uneasy,  discontented,  mutinous  over  the  delay. 

Meantime,  all  these  new  foci  of  this  amateur  organiza- 
tion began  to  show  problems  of  organization  and  adminis- 
tration. The  several  captains  unavoidably  lapped  over 
one  another  in  their  work,  and  a  certain  loss  in  speed  and 
efficiency  rose  out  of  this.  The  idea  had  proved  good, 
but  it  was  so  good  it  was  running  away  with  itself!  No 
set  of  men  could  handle  it  except  under  a  well-matured 
and  adequately-managed  organization,  worked  out  in  de- 
tail from  top  to  bottom. 

We  may  not  place  one  man  in  this  League  above  another, 
for  all  were  equal  in  their  unselfish  loyalty,  from  private 
to  general,  from  operative  to  inspector,  and  from  inspector 
to  National  Directors ;  but  it  is  necessary  to  set  down  the 
basic  facts  of  the  inception  of  the  League  in  order  that 
the  vast  volume  and  usefulness  of  its  labors  properly  may 
be  understood.  So  it  is  in  order  now  to  describe  how  this 
great  army  of  workers  became  a  unit  of  immense,  united 
and  effective  striking  power,  how  the  swift  and  divers 
developments  of  the  original  idea  became  coordinated  into 
a  smooth-running  machine,  nation-wide  in  its  actiA^ties. 

Now  at  last,  long  deferred — too  long — came  April  6,  1917. 
The  black  headlines  smote  silence  at  every  American  table. 

WAR! 

We  were  at  War!  Men  did  not  talk  much.  Mothers 
looked  at  their  sons,  wives  at  their  husbands.  Thousands 
of  souls  had  their  Gethsemane  that  day.  Now  we  were  to 
place  our  OAvn  breasts  against  the  steel  of  Germany. 

The  cover  was  off.  War — war  to  the  end,  now — war  on 
both  sides  of  the  sea — war  against  every  form  and  phase 
of  German  activity!  America  said  aloud  and  firmly  now, 
as,  in  her  anguish,  she  had  but  recently  whispered,  '^I 
need  you,  my  children ! ' '  And  millions  of  Americans,  many 
of  them  debarred  from  arms  by  age  or  infirmity,  came 
forward,  each  in  his  own  way,  and  swore  the  oath. 

The  oath  of  the  League  spread.  Not  one  city  or  state, 
but  all  America  must  be  covered,  and  it  must  be  done  at 
once.  The  need  of  a  national  administration  became  at 
once  imperative. 

In  this  work  on  the  neutrality  cases  Mr.  Clabaugh  and 


32  THE  WEB 

his  volunteer  aids  often  were  in  Washington  together. 
The  Department  of  Justice,  so  far  from  finding  this 
unasked  civilian  aid  officious,  gladly  hailed  it  as  a  practical 
aid  of  immeasurable  value.  It  became  apparent  that  the 
League  was  bound  to  be  national  in  every  way  at  no  late 
day. 

All  this  meant  money.  But  America,  unasked,  opened 
her  secret  purse  strings.  Banks,  prominent  firms,  loyal 
individuals  gave  thousands  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
dollars  for  a  work  which  they  knew  must  be  done  if 
America  was  to  be  safe  for  decent  men.  And  so  the  silent 
army  of  which  you  never  knew,  grew  and  marched  out 
daily.  Your  house,  your  neighbor's,  was  known  and 
watched,  guarded  as  loyal,  circled  as  disloyal.  The  nature 
of  your  business  and  your  neighbor's  was  known — and 
tabulated.  You  do  not  know  to-day  how  thoroughly 
America  knows  you.  If  you  are  hyphenated  now,  if  you 
are  disloyal  to  this  flag,  so  much  the  worse  for  you. 

It  early  became  plain  to  manufacturers  and  owners  of 
large  industrial  plants  of  all  sorts  that  they  were  in  imme- 
diate danger  of  dynamite  outrages.  Many  plants  agreed 
to  present  to  the  League  monthly  a  considerable  chocque 
to  aid  the  work  of  safeguarding.  Many  wealthy  individ- 
uals gave  additional  amounts.  A  very  considerable  sum 
was  j:-aisedi  from  the  sale  of  badges  to  the  operatives,  it 
being  explained  to  all  that  they  were  sold  at  a  profit  for 
the  benefit  of  the  League.  At  all  times  large  amounts 
came  in,  raised  by  State  or  local  chiefs,  each  of  whom 
knew  his  own  community  well.  On  one  day  in  October, 
1917,  a  call  Avent  out  to  6700  members  of  the  League  to 
meet  on  a  certain  evening  at  Medinah  Temple  in  Chicago, 
admission  to  be  by  credentials  only.  That  meeting  was 
addressed  by  Chiefs  and  others.  In  a  short  time  $82,000 
was  raised.  Later  on,  certain  bankers  of  national  reputa- 
tion— F.  A.  Vanderlip  of  New  York,  George  M.  Reynolds 
of  Chicago,  Festus  Wade  of  St.  Louis,  Stoddard  Jess  of 
Los  Angeles,  and  others — sent  out  an  appeal  to  the  bankers 
of  America  in  the  interests  of  the  League.  This  perhaps 
would  of  itself  have  raised  a  half  million  more,  but  it 
came  among  Liberty  Loan  activities,  and  before  it  was 
fully  under  way,  the  news  of  the  Armistice  broke,  which 


THE  WEB  33 

automatically  ended  many  things.  But  the  American  Pro- 
tective League  had  money.  It  can  have  all  the  money  it 
may  need  in  any  future  day. 

It  was  not  until  fall  of  1917  that,  in  answer  to  the 
imperious  demands  of  the  swiftly  grown  association,  now 
numbering  thousands  in  every  State  of  the  Union,  and  in 
order  to  get  into  closer  touch  with  the  Department  of 
Justice,  the  League  moved  its  headquarters  from  Chicago 
to  Washington.  Mr.  Charles  Daniel  Frey  of  Chicago,  who 
had  worked  out  with  his  associates  the  details  of  a  per- 
fectly subdivided  organization,  was  made  Captain  U.  S.  A. 
and  liaison  officer  for  the  League's  work  with  the  Military 
Intelligence  Division  of  the  Army,  a  division  which  itself 
had  known  great  changes  and  rapid  development.  The 
three  National  Directors  were  now  A.  M.  Briggs,  Chair- 
man; Captain  Charles  Daniel  Frey,  and  Mr.  Victor  Elting, 
the  latter  gentleman,  an  attorney  of  Chicago,  having  before 
now  proved  himself  of  the  utmost  service  in  handling 
certain  very  tangled  skeins.  Mr.  Elting  had  been  Assist- 
ant Chief  in  Chicago,  working  with  Mr.  Frey  as  Chief. 
Then  later  came  on,  from  his  League  duties  in  Chicago, 
Mr.  S.  S.  Doty,  a  man  successful  in  his  own  business 
organization  and  of  proved  worth  in  working  out  details 
of  organization.  Many  others  from  Chicago,  in  many 
capacities,  joined  the  personnel  in  Washington,  and  good 
men  were  taken  on  as  needed  and  found.  It  would  be 
cheap  to  attempt  mention  of  these,  but  it  would  be  wrong 
not  to  give  some  general  mention  of  the  men  who  actually 
had  in  hand  the  formation  of  the  League  and  the  conduct 
of  its  widely  reaching  affairs  from  that  time  until  its  close 
at  the  end  of  the  war.  They  worked  in  secrecy  and  they 
asked  no  publicity  then  or  now. 

One  thing  must  be  very  plain  and  clear.  These  men, 
each  and  all  of  them,  worked  as  civilian  patriots,  and, 
except  in  a  very  few  necessary  clerical  cases,  without  pay 
of  any  sort.  There  was  no  mummery  about  the  League, 
no  countersigns  or  grips  or  passwords,  no  rituals,  no  rules. 
It  never  was  a  ^'secret  society,*'  as  we  understand  that 
usually.  It  was — the  American  Protective  League,  deadly 
simple,  deadly  silent,  deadly  in  earnest.  There  has  been 
no  glory,  no  pay,  no  publicity,  no  advertising,  no  reward 


34  THE  WEB 

in  the  American  Protective  League,  except  as  each  man's 
conscience  gave  him  his  best  rewaixi,  the  feeling  that  he 
had  fulfilled  the  imperative  obligations  of  his  citizenship 
and  had  done  his  bit  in  the  world's  greatest  war. 

By  the  time  the  League  was  in  AVashington,  it  had  a 
quarter-million  members.  Its  records  ran  into  tons  and 
tons;  its  clerical  work  was  an  enormous  thing. 

The  system,  swiftly  carried  out,  was  unbelievably  suc- 
cessful. An  unbelievable  artesian  fountain  of  American 
loyalty  had  been  struck.  What  and  how  much  work  that 
body  of  silent  men  did,  how  varied  and  how  imperatively 
essential  was  the  work  they  did,  how  thrillingly  interesting 
it  became  at  times  as  the  netted  web  caught  more  and 
more  in  its  secret  sweeping,  must  be  taken  up  in  later 
chapters. 

As  to  the  total  volume  of  the  League's  work,  it  never 
will  be  kno^^Ti,  and  no  figures  will  ever  cover  it  more  than 
partially.  It  handled  in  less  than  two  years,  for  the  War 
Department  alone,  over  three  million  cases.  It  spent  millions 
of  dollars.  It  had  a  quarter  million  silent  and  resolute 
men  on  its  rolls.  These  men  were  the  best  of  their  com- 
munities. They  did  not  work  for  pa}^  They  worked 
for  duty,  and  worked  harder  than  a  like  number  in  any 
army  of  the  world.  Some  of  the  things  they  did,  some  of 
the  astonishing  matters  they  uncovered,  some  of  the 
strange  stories  they  unearthed,  will  be  taken  up  in  order 
in  the  pages  following,  and  in  a  w^ay  more  specifically 
informing  than  has  hitherto  been  attempted. 

The  League  totals  are  tremendous,  but  the  trouble  with 
totals  is  that  they  do  not  enter  into  comprehension.  A 
million  dollars  means  little  as  a  phrase,  if  left  barren  of 
some  yard-stick  for  comparative  measurement.  Thus, 
when  we  say  that  long  ago  the  number  of  suspect  cases 
investigated  by  the  American  Protective  League  had  passed 
the  three-million  mark,  we  hail  the  figures  as  grandiose, 
but  have  no  personal  idea  of  what  they  mean,  no  accurate 
conception  of  the  multitude,  the  nature  and  the  multi- 
plicity in  detail  of  the  three  million  separate  and  distinct 
cases.  It  is  when  we  begin  to  go  into  details  as  to  the 
work  and  its  organization  from  unit  to  block,  from  opera- 
tive to  chief,  that  we  begin  to  open  our  eyes. 


THE  WEB  35 

The  government  of  this  country  had  had  thrown  on  it 
all  at  once  a  burden  a  thousand  times  as  great  as  that  of 
times  of  peace.  We  had  to  raise  men  and  money,  muni- 
tions, food,  fuel  for  ourselves  and  all  the  world.  We  were 
not  prepared.  We  had  to  learn  all  at  once  the  one  and 
hardest  thing — one  which  America  never  yet  had  learned — 
economy.  We  had  to  do  all  the  active  and  positive  mate- 
rial things  necessary  to  put  an  Army  in  the  field  across 
seas — build  ships,  fabricate  ordnance,  arm  large  bodies  of 
men,  train  them,  feed  them,  get  their  fighting  morale  on 
edge. 

Yes,  all  these  things — but  this  was  only  part.  Our  nega- 
tive defense,  our  silent  forces  also  had  to  be  developed. 
We  had  to  learn  economy — and  suspicion.  That  last  was 
hard  to  learn.  Just  as  delay  and  breakdowns  happened 
in  other  branches  of  the  suddenly  overloaded  government, 
so  a  breakdown  in  the  resources  of  the  Department  of  Jus- 
tice— least  known  but  most  valuable  portion  of  our  nation's 
governmental  system — was  a  thing  imminent.  That  was 
because  of  the  swift  multiplication  of  the  list  of  entirely 
new  things  that  had  to  be  looked  into  with  justice,  and 
yet  with  speed.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  without 
the  inspired  idea  of  the  American  Protective  League,  its 
Web  spread  out  behind  the  lines,  there  could  not  long  have 
been  said  in  the  full  confidence  of  to-day,  **God  reigns, 
and  the  Government  at  Washington  still  lives." 

Besides  being  an  auxiliary  of  the  Department  of  Justice, 
the  League  was  the  active  ally  also  of  the  Department  of 
War,  of  the  ^slvj,  of  the  State,  of  the  Treasury.  It  worked 
for  the  Shipping  Board,  the  Fuel  and  Foodj  Administra- 
tions, and  the  Alien  Property  Custodian.  It  ran  down,  in 
its  less  romantic  labors,  sugar-allowance  violators,  violators 
of  the  gasless-Sunday  laws,  the  lightless-day  laws,  violators 
of  the  liquor  laws,  as  well  as  the  large  offenders — the  spies 
who  got  internment  or  the  penitentiary  as  the  penalty  of 
getting  caught.  All  these  large  and  small  activities  may- 
be understood  by  a  glance  at  the  report-sheet  of  any  divi- 
sion chief.  The  heads  and  sub-heads  will  show  the  differ- 
entiation. The  chart  following  this  chapter  will  show  the 
method  of  organizing  the  League 's  personnel  which  was  used 
in  practically  all  the  great  cities.    The  table  of  dates  which 


36  THE  WEB 

immediately  follows,  sets  forth  in  outline  the  League's  early 
history,  and  indicates  the  rapidly  broadening  character  of 
the  League's  work. 

EARLY  DATES  OF  THE  AMERICAN 
PROTECTIVE  LEAGUE 

January  25,  1917  First  Call  by  Mr.  Clabaugh, 

February  2,  1917  Second   Call  by  Mr.   Clabaugh    (for 

automobiles). 

February  2  to  25,  1917      Automobiles  and  Plans. 

February  25,  1917  Submitted  Plan. 

March  1,  1917  Plan    Endorsed    and    Forwarded    to 

Washington. 

March  15,  1917  Invited  to  Washington. 

March  22,  1917  League  Authorized. 

March  22,  1917  New  York  Division  Started. 

March  22  to  26,  1917  Organizing  in  Chicago. 

March  26,  1917  Chicago  Division  Started. 

March  27,  1917  Milwaukee  Division  Started. 

March  29,  1917  St.  Louis  Division  Started. 

April  6,  1917  State      of      War      with      Germany 

Acknowledged. 

April  9,  1917  Philadelphia  Division  Started. 

November  1,  1917  Board  of  National  Directors  Organ- 

ized. 

November  15,  1917  National    Headquarters    Established 

in  Washington. 

This  will  close  a  brief  and  necessarily  incomplete  review 
of  the  widely  ramified  nature  of  that  Web  ^vhich  America 
made  over  night  in  her  time  of  need. 

There  was  also  a  confidential  pamphlet,  originally  sent 
only  to  members,  which  elaborates  and  makes  clear  the 
basic  purposes  of  the  League,  whose  personnel  and  methods 
already  have  been  covered.  It  is  given  in  full  as  Appendix 
B.  A  great  historic  interest  attaches  to  this  document, 
Avhich  tells  the  complete  inside  story  of  the  League  and 
the  manner  in  which  it  first  was  organized  for  its  w^ork. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  say  that  this  now  appears  before  the 
eyes  of  the  general  public  for  the  first  time. 

Lastly,  there  is  for  the  first  time  made  public  the  solemn 
oath  taken  by  each  member  of  the  American  Protective 


THE  WEB  37 

League.  Years  hence,  this  page  will  have  historic  value. 
It  records  one  of  the  most  singular  phenomena  of  the 
American  civilization. 

THE  OATH  OF  MEMBERSHIP 

I, ,  a  memier  of  the  Ameri- 
can Protective  League,  organized  with  the  approval  and 
operating  under  the  direction  of  the  United  States  Department 
of  Justice,  Bureau  of  Investigation,  do  hereby  solemnhj  swear: 

That  I  am  a  citizen  of  the  United  States  of  America;  and 
that  I  will  uphold  and  defend  the  Constitution  and  Laws  of 
the  United  States  against  all  enemies,  foreign  and  domestic, 
and  will  bear  true  faith  and  allegiance  to  the  same  at  all 
times  as  a  true  and  loyal  citizen  thereof. 

That  I  will  give  due  time  and  diligent  attention  to  such 
service  as  I  shall  undertake  to  render;  and  that  I  will  execute 
promptly  and  to  the  best  of  my  ability  the  commands  of  my 
superiors  in  connection  therewith. 

That  I  will  in  all  respects  observe  the  rules  and  regulations, 
present  and  future,  of  this  organization;  and  that  I  will 
promptly  report  to  my  superiors  any  and  all  violations  thereof, 
and  all  information  of  every  kind  and  character  and  from 
whatever  source  derived,  tending  to  prove  hostile  or  disloyal 
acts  or  intentions  on  the  part  of  any  person  whatsoever  and 
all  other  information  of  any  kind  of  interest  or  value  to  the 
Government. 

That  I  will  not,  except  in  the  necessary  performance  of  my 
duty,  exhibit  my  credentials  or  disclose  my  membership  in  this 
organization;  and  that  I  will  not  disclose  to  any  person  other 
than  a  duly  authorized  Government  oflSeial  or  ofiBcer  of  this 
organization,  facts  and  information  coming  to  my  knowledge  in 
connection  with  its  work. 

That  the  statement  on  the  opposite  side  hereof,  by  me  sub- 
scribed, is  true  and  correct. 

That    I    take    this    obligation    freely,    without    any    mental 
reservation  or  purpose  of  evasion;   and  that  I  will  well  and 
faithfully  discharge  my  duties,  as  a  volunteer  for  the  defense 
and  preservation  of  the  United  States  of  America. 
SO  HELP  ME  OOD 


CHAPTER  III 

EARLY  DAYS  OF  THE  LEAGUE 

"D.  J."  and  "A.  P.  L."— The  Personal  Statement  of  the 
Chicago  Division  Superintendent  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of 
Investigation  —  Early  Days  of  the  League  —  The  Nation 
Unprepared  —  Swift  Rallying  of  the  Minute  Men. 

^'WitJiout  exaggeration,  I  think  tJie  Chicago  Division  of 
the  American  Protective  League  did  seventy-five  per  cent 
of  the  Government  investigating  work  of  the  Chicago  dis- 
trict throughout  the  period  of  the  war.  It  seems  to  me  that 
this  one  sentence  covers  the  situation." — Hinton  G.  Cla- 
baugh,  Chicago  Agent,  U.  S.  Department  of  Justice. 

In  previous  pages  a  general  outline  of  the  birth  and 
growth  of  the  American  Protective  League  has  been  given, 
with  a  general  statement  also  as  to  its  wide  usefulness 
in  the  exigencies  of  the  tremendous  days  of  the  world 
war.  There  will  be,  h^owever,  many  thousands  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  League,  and  a  like  number  of  the  lay  public, 
who  will  be  curious  as  to  the  specific  and  more  personal 
facts  surrounding  the  early  days  of  the  organization.  Such 
facts  are  part  of  the  country's  history  as  well  as  that  of 
the  League,  and  therefore  ought  to  be  recorded,  and 
recorded  accurately  and  indisputably. 

Mr.  Hinton  G.  Clabaugh,  division  superintendent  of  the 
Bureau  of  Investigation  of  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Justice, 
was  asked  for  a  written  brief,  historically  covering  the 
joint  activities  of  the  Department  of  Justice  and  its  A.  P.  L. 
auxiliary  in  Chicago  during  the  early  period  of  the  war. 
The  admirably  comprehensive  record  which  Mr.  Clabaugh 
has  furnished  appears  in  this  volume  as  Appendix  A. 

No  statement  of  facts  and  figures,  however,  or  of  dates 
and  details,  can  really  cover  the  story  of  the  American 
Protective  League.    It  has  a  character  and  a  history  which 

38 


EARLY  DAYS  OF  THE  LEAGUE  39 

refuse  to  classify  or  to  run  parallel  with  other  organiza- 
tions. It  was  an  idea  born  out  of  a  vast  necessity,  and 
its  growth  seemed  to  be  a  thing  apart  from  ordinary  busi- 
ness methods.  Indeed,  it  sprang  into  such  rapid  stature 
that  in  large  part  its  officers  followed  it  rather  than  led  it. 
It  was  almost  sporadic  in  a  thousand  towns,  so  quickly 
did  the  achievement  of  organization  follow  the  realization 
of  the  need.  Thereafter  came  the  days  of  national  organ- 
ization, of  system,  patience,  perseverance,  and  efficiency, 
which  made  it  a  well-knit  power  in  all  parts  of  the 
country. 

It  was  Mr.  Clabaugh's  privilege  to  have  lent  aid  and  en- 
couragement in  the  days  when  the  League  was  not  yet  a 
reality,  the  early  days  when  all  was  nebulous,  when  no 
one  knew  anyone  else,  and  when  cases  were  pouring  into 
D.  J.  that  had  to  be  handled  in  the  best  way  possible  and 
at  the  first  moment  possible. 

The  A.  P.  L.  has  always  served  the  regular  organization 
of  the  law,  has  always  worked  with  or  under  the  super- 
vision of  the  D.  J.  bureau  chief  nearest  at  hand,  and, 
indeed,  never  pretended  to  do  more  than  that.  But  this 
cooperation  and  interlocking  of  forces  was  an  easier  thing 
for  D.  J.  superintendents  elsewhere,  later  in  the  game,  after 
A.  P.  L.  had  become  an  accepted  success  all  over  the 
country. 

It  was  at  the  very  beginning  that  the  greatest  difficulties 
had  to  be  met,  and  it  was  during  these  early  troubled  days 
of  the  League  that  its  history  became  inseparably  linked 
with  that  of  the  Chicago  bureau  of  the  Department  of  Jus- 
tice. Set  down  in  a  seething  center  of  alien  activity  —  for 
so  we  may  justly  call  Chicago  in  the  early  days  of  this 
war  —  with  only  a  handful  of  men  to  rely  on,  with  no  laws, 
no  precedents,  no  support,  no  help,  no  past  like  to  the  pres- 
ent, and  no  future  that  could  be  predicated  on  anything 
that  had  gone  before,  Mr.  Clabaugh's  bureau  was  the  first 
to  get  swamped  with  the  neutrality  cases  —  and  the  first 
to  be  offered  counsel,  friendship,  support,  help,  money,  men 
and  methods,  all  in  quality  and  amount  fitted  to  win  the 
day  for  him  at  once.  The  Clabaugh  story,  therefore,  is  the 
most  important  one  told  by  any  bureau  chief,  and  it  is 
historically  indispensable. 


40  THE  WEB 

It  is  all  very  well  to  have  confidence  in  our  government 
and  to  believe  in  a  general  way  that  it  cannot  err  and 
cannot  fail,  but  government  in  peace  and  government  in 
war  times  are  two  distinct  and  separate  propositions.  The 
sheer  truth  is  that  there  was  absolutely  no  arm  or  branch 
of  our  government  which  was  prepared  for  war.  In  part, 
we  never  did  get  prepared  for  it,  so  far  as  essential  equip- 
ment of  a  military  sort  is  concerned.  In  artillery,  in  aero- 
planes, in  various  sorts  of  munitions  and  of  equipment,  we 
were  not  ready  for  war  when  the  Armistice  was  signed. 
We  had  no  adequate  military  or  intelligence  system,  and 
the  splendid  force  built  up  as  M.  I.  D.  was  built  after  the 
war  was  begun  and  not  before.  In  the  same  way  —  al- 
though, of  course,  we  had  the  American  faith  and  respect 
for  our  courts,  believing  them  to  be  in  some  way  supernal 
institutions  which  could  not  err  and  which  needed  no  atten- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  people  —  our  judiciary  also  was 
unprepared  for  war.  It  never  would  have  been  prepared 
for  war  —  never  in  the  world  —  had  it  not  been  for  the 
American  Protective  League.  It  is  certainly  a  most 
curious,  almost  an  uncanny  story,  how  the  Minute  Men  of 
America  once  more  saved  the  day,  responding  instantly  to 
a  great  national  need,  not  knowing  overmuch  of  this  new 
game,  but  each  resolved  to  fight  —  each,  if  you  please,  re- 
solving in  unheroic  and  undramatic  way  —  in  much  the 
same  frame  of  mind  of  those  men  at  Verdun  who  wrote 
on  the  page  of  martial  history  the  clarion  phrase,  ''They 
shall  not  pass ! ' ' 

The  enemy  did  not  pass  in  Chicago,  nor  in  New  York, 
nor  in  San  Francisco,  nor  in  any  place  between.  Not 
prepared  —  a  whole  nation  in  shirtsleeves  at  the  plow  —  we 
became  prepared.  We  fought  with  one  hand,  while,  with 
the  other,  we  buttoned  on  the  new  tunic  for  which  we  had 
not  yet  been  measured,  and  in  Army,  Navy,  Aviation,  In- 
telligence, Supply,  Motor  Transport  and  Department  of 
Justice,  we  learned  as  we  fought  —  and  won.  The  organ- 
ization of  the  American  Protective  League  reveals  a  curious 
phase  of  life  in  this  republic.  It  could  not  have  taken 
place  in  any  other  country  of  the  world. 

*'A  word  as  to  the  Chicago  organization  is  in  order,'* 
says  the  writer  of  this  first  report  of  D.  J.  on  A.  P.  L. 


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EARLY  DAYS  OF  THE  LEAGUE  41 

''The  work  of  the  League  was  presumed  to  be  to  report 
matters  of  a  disloyal  nature  that  came  to  the  attention 
of  the  members  and  to  see  that  they  were  brought  to  the 
attention  of  the  proper  Government  officials.  However, 
the  work  of  the  agents  of  the  Bureau  itself  increased  so 
rapidly  at  this  time  that  it  was  a  physical  impossibility 
for  the  small  number  to  handle  the  same,  and  by  degrees 
members  of  the  League  who  showed  aptitude  for  the  work 
were  called  upon  to  assist  the  agents  of  the  Bureau.  Grad- 
uaUy,  more  and  more  work  was  tlirown  on  tlie  League  until 
practically  all  complaints  coining  to  tlie  Bureau  hy  mail  were 
turned  over  to  tlie  League  for  them  to  investigate.' ' 

If,  during  the  later  months  of  the  war,  you  had  visited 
the  Department  of  Justice  in  the  Federal  Building  in  Chi- 
cago, you  would  have  found  extensive  and  well-equipped 
offices,  ably  manned  and  humming  with  activity.  Yet  the 
Chicago  department,  though  large  in  personnel  and  effi- 
cient in  administration,  was  greatly  overworked  in  this 
hotbed  of  pro-German  and  enemy  spy  activity. 

After  leaving  the  Federal  Building,  let  us  say,  you  had 
also  decided  to  visit  the  headquarters  of  the  volunteer 
organization  in  Chicago.  Less  than  a  block  away  from  the 
federal  offices,  in  a  stately  building  given  over  entirely  to 
the  housing  of  organizations  whose  sole  aim  and  purpose 
was  the  winning  of  the  war,  you  would  have  found  a  set 
of  offices  as  large,  as  well  equipped,  as  full  of  filed  records, 
and  of  as  able  a  personnel  as  those  of  the  U.  S.  bureau. 
There  would  be  this  difference :  the  latter  offices  —  those 
of  the  American  Protective  League — were  run  by  men  who 
got  no  pay — and  there  were  almost  one  hundred  times  as 
many  of  them  as  there  were  of  the  D.  J.  w^orkers.  Yet 
the  two  great  organizations  are  parts  of  the  same  system, 
and  have  worked  together  in  perfect  harmony  and  mutual 
benefit.  Together,  they  have  held  German  crime  and 
espionage  helpless  in  Chicago  all  through  the  war. 

Of  course,  the  tremendously  expensive  operations  of  so 
large  a  secret  service  organization  could  be  met  only  by 
large-handed  voluntary  giving  on  the  part  of  private  cit- 
izens. For  instance,  the  office  rent  alone  of  the  A.  P.  L. 
in  Chicago  ran  into  thousands  of  dollars  monthly.  It  was 
all     carried  by  one  public     utility     concern,     the     Com- 


42  THE  WEB 

monwealth  Edison  Company,  which  turned  over  the 
needed  space  in  a  building  which  formerly  housed  its  own 
offices.  It  is  a  part  of  the  private  history  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice,  scarcely  if  ever  mentioned,  that  long  be- 
fore the  idea  of  the  American  Protective  League  was 
broached  —  indeed,  at  the  time  when  we  had  just  severed 
diplomatic  relations  with  Germany  —  Mr.  Samuel  Insull, 
afterward  Chairman  of  the  State  Council  of  Defense  for 
Illinois,  called  on  Mr.  Clabaugh  and  offered  financial  aid 
to  the  Bureau  of  Investigation.  He  said:  ''I  know  how 
meager  your  resources  are,  and  I  believe  there  is  a  lot  of 
trouble  not  far  ahead.  Let  me  know  if  you  need  men  or 
money,  and  I'll  see  that  you  get  both.''  This,  of  course, 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  later  organization  of  the 
League,  nor  with  the  idea  on  which  it  is  based,  but  Mr. 
Clabaugh  always  has  said  that  Mr.  Insull  was  the  first 
private  citizen  to  his  knowledge  to  offer  financial  aid  to  the 
U.  S.  Government. 

The  public  has  heard  more  of  '*  D.  J."  than  it  has  of 
*  *  A.  P.  L. "  for  obvious  reasons.  Of  the  two  great  office 
systems,  one  has  been  running  for  many  years  as  a 
Imown  part  of  the  Federal  Government.  The  other  was 
two  years  old,  and  was  always  secret  in  its  work  and 
personnel.  If  it  ever  were  a  question  of  credit  or  '*  glory," 
the  palm  must  go  and  has  gone  to  the  Federal  arm,  because 
that  is  where  the  denouements  of  cases  had  their  home, 
and  where  publication  of  the  printable  facts  originated. 
A.  P.  L.  carried  the  evidence  to  the  door  of  D.  J.  and 
stopped.     It  started  cases,  but  did  not  finish  them. 

The  public  never  had  more  than  a  very  vague  idea  of 
the  workings  of  the  vast  duo-fold  machine  which  held  life 
and  property  in  America  so  safe  in  the  dangerous  days  of 
the  war.  For  instance,  the  average  man  reading  news- 
paper mention  of  Mr.  Clabaugh 's  activities  as  bureau  head, 
usually  thought  of  him  as  public  prosecutor.  He  was  not 
that.  It  was  his  duty,  as  it  was  the  League 's  duty,  only  to 
procure  testimony.  His  work  was  not  of  the  legal  branch, 
and  he  himself  never  has  been  admitted  to  the  bar,  al- 
though he  —  with  his  auxiliary,  A.  P.  L. —  has  won  the 
largest  and  most  stubbornly  fought  criminal  cases  in  the 
history  of  the  country,  and  is  devoutly  feared  to-day  by 
countless  I.  W.  W.  's  not  yet  arrested. 


EARLY  DAYS  OF  THE  LEAGUE  43 

The  story  of  all  these  curiously  interactive  agencies, 
official  and  amateur,  is  indeed  the  greatest  detective  story 
in  the  world,  and  it  is  very  difficult  to  measure  it  in  full, 
or  to  visualize  it  in  detail,  so  simply  did  it  all  happen,  so 
naturally,  so  swiftly  and  so  much  as  a  matter  of  course. 
There  is  no  like  proof  in  history  of  the  ability  of  the 
American  people  to  govern  itself  and  to  take  care  of  itself. 
Mr.  Clabaugh's  vivid  and  accurate  story  will  bear  out  all 
these  statements,  and  it  is  requested  that  it  be  read  by 
all  who  wish  a  clear  and  consecutive  acquaintance  with  the 
history  of  the  American  Protective  League.  Attention  is 
again  called  to  it  as  printed  in  full  in  Appendix  A. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  LEAGUE  IN  WASHINGTON 

Summary  of  the  League's  Results  Throughout  the  United 
States  —  Report  of  the  National  Directors  —  Facts,  Fig- 
ures and  Totals  for  All  the  Divisions. 

Facts  now  may  be  made  public  property  wbicli  until 
lately  might  not  have  been  divulged.  We  therefore  shall 
find  profit  now  in  studying  the  central  organization  by 
means  of  which  the  aroused  Americans  combined  to  fight 
the  hidden  forces  of  their  unscrupulous  enemy.  The  origin 
and  growth,  the  general  plans  and  methods  of  the  Amer- 
ican Protective  League,  have  been  explained;  and  it  will 
now  be  well,  before  we  pass  on  to  the  specific  story  of  the 
League's  activities,  to  give  some  idea  of  the  wide-reaching 
consolidation  of  those  activities  which  followed  upon  the 
establishment  of  the  National  Headquarters. 

The  report  of  any  official  may  seem  dry  and  formal,  but 
the  records  should  be  made  to  show  how  America's  ama- 
teur Scotland  Yard  organized  to  fight  the  forces  of  Ger- 
many all  over  America.  This  portion  of  the  League's 
story  is  therefore  of  great  value  to  anyone  desirous  of 
knowing  the  logical  steps  by  which  the  League  developed 
into  a  truly  national  institution. 

The  liaison  officer  of  the  National  Directors,  Captain 
Charles  Daniel  Frey,  made  his  report  and  summary  of 
November,  1918,  to  Colonel  K.  C.  Masteller  of  the  General 
Staff,  Chief  of  the  negative  branch  of  the  Military  Intel- 
ligence Division.  This  report  was  a  general  assembling 
of  the  national  activities  of  the  League  up  to  the  time  of 
the  signing  of  the  Armistice.  Certain  extracts  are  made 
in  consonance  with  the  general  outline  above  indicated. 
It  should  be  noted  that  this  report  covers  only  a  portion 
of  the  League's  work  in  Washington.     The  Department  of 

44 


THE  LEAGUE  IN  WASHINGTON  45 

Justice  figures,  as  was  to  be  expected,  exceeded  those  of 
any  other  branch  of  the  League's  work.  The  War  Depart- 
ment totals  were  also  very  high  —  evidence  of  service 
rendered'  by  the  League  which  the  AYar  Department  al- 
ways has  been  very  courteous  and  grateful  in  acknowledg- 
ing.    Captain  Frey 's  report  reads : 

Sir:  In  compliance  with  your  request,  we  beg  to  submit  the 
following  statement  of  service  rendered  the  War  Department 
by  the  American  Protective  League.  As  you  know,  local 
divisions  of  the  League  are  in  operation  in  practically  all 
towns  and  cities  of  substantial  size  throughout  the  United 
States,  and  the  League  has  been  extended,  through  a  plan  of 
county  organization,  generally  throughout  the  rural  commu- 
nities. It  is  not  possible  to  submit  to  you  an  accurate  classified 
statement  of  the  aggregate  of  all  of  the  work  done  through- 
out the  country.  We  are  able,  however,  to  present  a  general 
statement  of  the  activities  of  the  League  for  the  War  Depart- 
ment of  the  United  States,  with  a  detailed  report  of  the  work 
of  the  local  divisions  in  one  hundred  communities  of  the  coun- 
try. The  total  population  of  these  communities  is  approxi- 
mately one-seventh  of  the  population  of  the  entire  country. 

The  work  of  the  American  Protective  League  for  the  Mil- 
itary Intelligence  Division  of  the  War  Department  began  soon 
after  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war.  When  the 
National  Headquarters  of  the  League  were  established  in  Wash- 
ington in  November,  1917,  the  National  Directors  conferred 
with  Colonel  R.  H.  Van  Deman  regarding  a  plan  for  wider 
service  throughout  the  entire  country.  One  of  the  National 
Directors  was  commissioned  in  the  army,  assigned  to  the  Mil- 
itary Intelligence  Division  and  detailed  to  the  work  of  the 
League.  In  April,  1918,  a  department  of  the  League  was  in- 
stalled in  the  Military  Intelligence  Division,  and  since  then  the 
work  has  constantly  grown  in  volume.  A  Captain  in  the 
Military  Intelligence  is  now  in  charge,  and  at  the  present  time 
thirty-six  employes  are  working  in  the  Section. 

The  increase  in  the  volume  of  work  is  clearly  shown  by  the 
records.  Investigations  directed  by  the  Section  in  May,  1918, 
numbered  819;  in  June,  1777;  in  July,  2382;  in  August,  3617; 
in  September,  6736;  and  in  October,  6604.  These  investigations 
were  of  applicants  for  overseas  service  for  the  Y.  M.  C.  A., 
Red  Cross,  Knights  of  Columbus,  Jewish  Welfare,  Salvation 
Army,  and  other  civilian  organizations;  of  applicants  for  com- 
missions and  employment  in  various  Departments  of  the 
Army,  including  the  Quartermaster  Department,  Surgeon  Gen- 


46  THE  WEB 

eral's  Office,  Department  of  Aeronautics,  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment, Signal  Corps,  Army  Chaplain  Service,  Chemical  Warfare 
Service,  etc.  They  also  included  investigations  on  counter- 
espionage matters,  German  propaganda,  deserters,  slackers  and 
various  other  miscellaneous  cases,  all  of  which  was  made  at 
the  direct  request  of  the  heads  of  the  different  sections  of  the 
Military  Intelligence  Division  at  Washington. 

The  character  of  this  work  differs  in  no  way  from  that  of  the 
Department  of  Military  Intelligence  having  to  do  with  Nega- 
tive Intelligence.  In  the  one  hundred  local  divisions  referred 
to,  the  number  of  cases  investigated  and  reported  upon  were 
62,888,  and  upon  the  percentage  basis,  the  number  handled 
throughout  the  country  would  be  440,216. 

The  League  has  likewise  exerted  itself  in  enlisting  the  aid  of 
the  public  in  reporting  enemy  activities,  disloyalties  and 
evasions  of  the  war  statutes.  In  various  cities,  bulletins  have 
been  posted  in  prominent  places,  including  street  cars,  office 
buildings  and  places  of  public  gathering,  requesting  citizens  to 
report  to  the  American  Protective  League  all  such  cases  com- 
ing to  their  knowledge.  Much  important  information  resulted 
from  this  practice. 

Because  of  the  fact  that  the  members  of  the  League  continue 
to  follow  their  daily  vocations  and  maintain  their  normal  con- 
nections with  the  community,  they  are  afforded  unusual  oppor- 
tunities for  the  investigation  of  radical  organizations  of  all 
kinds.  The  League  has  been  able  to  introduce  members  into 
all  of  the  more  important  organizations,  and  to  report  upon 
their  policies  and  activities  as  well  as  upon  the  activities  of 
individual  members.  The  number  of  investigations  of  this 
character  carried  on  in  the  one  hundred  divisions  referred  to 
were  3,645;  or  25,515  for  the  entire  country.  As  most  of  these 
were  extended,  and  in  many  cases  involved  a  complete  report 
upon  the  local  organization  as  a  whole,  the  figures  represent 
a  very  considerable  amount  of  work.  Under  this  heading  are 
Included  investigations  of  the  I.  W.  W.,  the  W.  I.  I.  U.,  pacifist 
organizations  of  many  kinds,  the  Peoples  Council,  the  League 
of  Humanity,  the  Non-Partisan  League,  the  Russellites  and 
certain  Socialistic  movements.  Sabotage  investigations  and 
conscientious  objectors  are  also  included. 

In  connection  with  the  development  of  the  overseas  service 
of  the  Red  Cross,  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  Knights  of  Columbus,  Jewish 
Welfare,  Salvation  Army  and  other  civilian  organizations  of 
like  character,  the  necessity  arose  for  the  careful  investigation 
of  the  character,  history  and  connections  of  civilian  applicants 
to  such  service.  Fortunately,  the  Military  Intelligence  finally 
took  over  the  entire  work  of  passing  upon  the  character  and 


THE  LEAGUE  IN  WASHINGTON  47 

loyalty  of  applicants,  and  relieved  the  League  of  the  responsibil- 
ity of  directly  advising  the  organizations  concerned  of  the 
outcome  of  the  investigations.  The  Military  Intelligence  then 
called  upon  the  League  as  its  agent  to  make  the  larger  part 
of  the  investigations.  By  this  method  the  name  of  the  inves- 
tigator and  of  the  individual  responsible  for  the  decision 
remains  undisclosed,  and  the  judgment  is  in  that  sense  im- 
personal. 

The  League  likewise  made  investigations  of  a  large  number 
of  applicants  for  commissions  in  various  Divisions  of  the 
War  Department,  including  applicants  for  Chaplaincies. 

Investigations  as  to  character  and  loyalty  reached  a  very 
large  total.  The  number  aggregates  30,166,  including  certain 
investigations  made  prior  to  the  establishment  of  the  League 
section  in  the  Military  Intelligence  Division  at  Washington. 

On  January  12,  1918,  the  National  Directors  issued  a  bulletin 
calling  upon  all  local  divisions  to  make  full  report  upon  the 
rumors,  current  in  their  communities,  which  were  harmful  to 
the  interest  of  the  United  States  in  the  prosecution  of  the 
war.  As  a  result  of  this  inquiry,  a  large  amount  of  informa- 
tion was  gathered,  complete  copies  of  which  were  turned 
over  to  the  Military  Intelligence  Division  for  its  files. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  a  large  number  of  members  of  the 
American  Protective  League  enlisted  in  the  military  service 
or  were  inducted  into  the  draft,  the  League  was  requested  by 
the  Military  Intelligence  Division  to  procure  the  names  of  all 
such  men,  with  their  record,  in  order  that  the  Military  In- 
telligence might  avail  itself  of  their  services  within  the  mil- 
itary forces  if  it  so  desired. 

In  addition  to  the  foregoing,  miscellaneous  investigations 
for  the  Military  Intelligence  were  carried  on  in  considerable 
Volume.  These  included  cases  of  impersonation  of  array  oflS- 
cers,  vis6  of  passports,  bribery,  theft  and  embezzlement,  and 
a  variety  of  other  cases.  These  miscellaneous  investigations 
in  the  local  divisions  referred  to  aggregate  19,556,  or  136,892 
for  the  country  at  large. 

On  June  5,  1917,  the  date  of  the  first  registration,  approx- 
imately eighty  thousands  of  members  of  the  League  throughout 
the  country  assisted  at  the  registration  polls,  giving  advice 
and  assistance  to  registrants  under  the  law  and  aiding  the 
oflBcials  in  all  possible  ways.  In  the  larger  cities,  particularly 
those  wuth  large  foreign  born  populations,  great  congestion 
resulted  because  of  the  ignorance  of  the  law  and  its  pro- 
visions on  the  part  of  registrants,  and  because  of  the  diffi- 
culty in  ascertaining  and  transcribing  correctly  their  names 
and  other  information  regarding  them.     The  number  of  places 


48  THE  WEB 

for  registration  proved  insuflBcient  because  of  the  shortness 
of  the  hours,  and  in  many  places  great  confusion  resulted. 
Acting  under  proper  instructions,  members  of  the  League  in 
large  numbers  served  as  volunteer  registrants  under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  oflScials. 

On  February  6,  1918,  the  Provost  Marshal  General  and  the 
Attorney  General  of  the  United  States  united  in  a  request  to 
the  American  Protective  League  to  cooperate  with  all  local 
and  district  exemption  boards  throughout  the  United  States 
in  locating  and  causing  to  present  themselves  to  the  proper 
authorities  delinquents  under  the  Selective  Service  Regula- 
tions, including  those  classed  as  deserters.  Thereupon  each 
local  division  assigned  certain  members  to  the  Local  and  Dis- 
trict Boards  within  its  jurisdiction.  These  activities  are  of 
many  varieties  and  include  the  investigation  of  Board  Mem- 
bers, conspiracies  and  bribery,  conspiracies  to  obstruct  the 
draft,  draft  evasion  in  all  forms,  fraudulent  attempts  at  de- 
ferred classification,  false  claims  for  exemption,  failures  to 
report  for  examination,  failures  to  report  for  mobilization, 
failures  to  file  questionnaires,  failures  to  register,  failures  to 
secure  final  classification,  failures  to  notify  local  boards  of 
changes  in  address,  failures  to  ascertain  present  status  from 
the  Local  Board,  failures  to  entrain,  and  all  other  alleged 
infractions  of  the  regulations.  These  investigations  made  by 
the  one  hundred  local  divisions  total  323,349.  Upon  a  per- 
centage basis,  the  cases  handled  throughout  the  country  would 
total  2,263,443,  and  including  the  slacker  raids,  an  enormous 
figure  which  cannot  well  be  estimated. 

Many  investigations  under  the  Local  Boards  were  made 
with  extreme  difficulty  because  of  the  confusion  in  the  spell- 
ing of  names,  inaccurate  records  and  constantly  shifting 
addresses  due  to  the  roaming  character  of  the  individual. 
We  believe  that  the  Provost  Marshal  General's  office  will 
confirm  the  statement  that  the  number  of  delinquents  and 
deserters  of  this  character  is  very  great,  possibly  exceeding 
two  hundred  thousands,  a  group  recruited  mostly  from 
laborers,  harvesters  and  the  other  ranks  of  homeless  un- 
skilled labor.  Members  of  the  League  have  given  a  great 
amount  of  time  and  energy  to  these  cases. 

During  the  two  or  three  months  following  the  day  of  first 
registration,  a  general  effort  was  made  by  local  divisions  of 
the  League  in  the  principal  cities  to  run  down  those  indi- 
viduals within  the  draft  age  who  had  failed  to  register  on 
June  5,  1917.  In  Chicago,  a  city-wide  drive  was  made  during 
which  all  stations  of  the  railroads  entering  Chicago  were 
covered  by  League  operators,  and  the  downtx>wn  or  loop  dis- 


THE  LEAGUE  IN  WASHINGTON  49 

trict  was  likewise  patroled.  This  was  the  first  organized 
effort  on  a  large  scale  to  enforce  the  regulations.  Subse- 
quently similar  action  was  taken  in  other  cities. 

In  the  early  summer  and  fall  of  1918  many  slacker  drives 
were  conducted  throughout  the  country.  They  were  made 
under  the  direction  of  the  oflQcials  of  the  Department  of  Jus- 
tice with  the  active  assistance  of  the  Local  Divisions  of  the 
American  Protective  League.  Effective  drives  occurred  in 
Cleveland,  Detroit,  St.  Louis,  Philadelphia,  New  York,  Chi- 
cago, Minneapolis,  St.  Paul,  Davenport,  Dayton  and  many 
cities  of  lesser  size  throughout  the  country. 

As  a  result  of  a  single  drive  in  one  city,  according  to  the 
report  of  the  Division  Superintendent  of  the  Bureau  of  In- 
vestigation of  the  Department  of  Justice,  approximately  five 
hundred  men  were  sent  to  camp  as  deserters  and  four  thousand 
delinquents  were  apprehended.  These  drives  as  a  whole 
were  carried  on  with  the  acquiescence  and  with  the  gen- 
eral satisfaction  of  the  public  at  large,  and  with  the  min- 
imum of  embarrassment  to  the  individuals  concerned.  The 
New  York  city  drive  presented  an  exception  where  certain 
diflQculties  arose. 

As  a  result  of  these  drives,  several  hundred  thousand  men 
were  examined  throughout  the  country;  tens  of  thousands 
who  had  failed  to  comply  with  the  requirements  of  the  Selec- 
tive Service  Regulations  were  compelled  to  go  to  their  Dis- 
trict Boards  to  make  good  their  delinquencies,  and  many 
thousand  delinquents  and  deserters  were  inducted  into  the 
army  who  otherwise  might  have  escaped  service. 

Members  of  the  League  have  apprehended  many  camp  de- 
serters and  soldiers  absent  without  leave.  They  have  inves- 
tigated thousands  of  requests  for  furloughs  where  the  soldier 
claimed  illness  at  home  or  made  other  claims.  Many  fraudu- 
lent requests  were  uncovered  by  these  investigations.  These 
Investigations,  in  the  one  hundred  divisions  referred  to,  num- 
ber 3,478. 

Early  in  April,  1918,  the  National  Directors  conferred  with 
Mr.  Fosdick  and  other  officials  of  the  Department  of  Training 
Camp  activities,  and  with  the  oflScials  of  the  Department  of 
Justice,  with  regard  to  developing  a  plan  for  the  successful 
enforcement  of  Section  13  of  the  Selective  Service  Act  and 
the  regulations  thereunder, — the  section  referred  to  having 
to  do  with  the  protection  of  the  military  and  naval  forces 
of  the  United  States  from  the  evil  influences  of  vice  and  pros- 
titution in  the  vicinity  of  the  camps.  In  the  one  hundred 
divisions  referred  to,  the  number  of  investigations  was  5,866, 
or  in  the  country  at  large,  41,062. 


50  THE  WEB 

In  addition  to  the  foregoing,  the  reports  from  local  divis- 
ions indicate  that  they  have  made  a  large  number  of  investi- 
gations of  a  general  character  for  the  War  Department,  in- 
cluding a  variety  of  subjects.  Mention  should  also  be  made  of 
a  considerable  amount  of  service  rendered  to  the  Foreign 
Recruiting  Missions  in  locating  slackers  and  deserters  and 
in  making  miscellaneous  investigations  of  individuals. 

On  March  18,  1918,  the  Military  Intelligence  Branch  of  the 
War  Department  requested  the  American  Protective  League 
to  procure  for  that  Department,  for  immediate  use  for  intel- 
ligence purposes,  photographs,  drawings  and  descriptions  of 
bridges,  buildings,  towns  and  localities,  then  occupied  by  the 
German  forces  in  France,  Belgium  and  Luxemburg,  and  like- 
wise in  that  portion  of  Germany  lying  west  of  a  line  running 
north  and  south  through  Hamburg.  In  compliance  with 
that  request.  National  Headquarters  issued  a  bulletin  to  all 
Local  Divisions,  calling  upon  the  entire  organization  of  the 
League  throughout  the  country  to  engage  in  the  work,  and 
prescribing  a  detailed  method  for  carrying  it  on.  The  result 
of  the  work,  and  the  appreciation  of  the  Military  Intelli- 
gence Branch,  was  expressed  to  the  League  in  a  letter  from 
Lieutenant  Colonel  Coxe,  under  date  of  June  11,  1918,  in  which 
he  quotes  a  letter  from  Colonel  Nolan,  chief  of  the  Military 
Intelligence  Force  abroad,  to  the  effect  that  the  material 
contained  much  information  of  value  and  that  "the  citizens  of 
the  United  States  w^ho  donated  the  above  articles  and  the 
League  which  collected  them  have  done  something  which  def- 
initely helps  toward  the  success  of  the  operations  of  our 
army." 

Summing  up  the  actual  investigations  made  by  the  Amer- 
ican Protective  League  in  the  one  hundred  local  divisions 
referred  to,  the  grand  total  of  cases  reported  by  these  divisions 
is  448,950.  As  has  been  show^n,  the  jurisdiction  of  these  divi- 
sions embraces  approximately  one-seventh  of  the  whole  pop- 
ulation of  the  country  covered  by  all  of  the  local  divisions  of 
the  League,  and  while  some  of  the  work  reported  by  the  one 
hundred  divisions  is  not  duplicated  elsewhere,  yet  the  re- 
verse is  true,  and  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  the  entire  num- 
ber of  cases  handled  by  the  League  for  the  War  Department 
throughout  the  country  is  seven  times  the  above  figure,  or 
more  than  three  million. 

In  conclusion,  we  beg  to  state  that  it  has  been  the  policy  to 
cooperate  with  all  local.  State  and  Federal  departments  In 
enforcing  the  war  laws  of  the  United  States.  Our  Local 
Chiefs  have  been  able  to  establish  cordial  relations  with  all 
local  police,   sheriffs,  fish  and   game   wardens,   fire  wardens, 


THE  LEAGUE  IN  WASHINGTON  51 

and  other  officials  whose  assistance  has  been  invaluable  in 
many  cases,  and  have  likewise  gained  the  friendly  interest 
and  support  of  County  and  State  officials  generally  as  well  as 
of  the  Judicial  Departments. 

We  have  not  attempted  to  set  forth  in  this  communication 
the  volume  of  work  done  for  the  Department  of  Justice. 

A  very  prominent  phase  of  work  in  which  the  A.  P.  L. 
was  of  use  to  the  War  Department  is  covered  very  well  by 
the  comment  of  the  Department  of  Justice  regarding  the 
law  under  which  the  American  Army  was  raised : 

The  most  important  of  the  war  laws  is  the  selective-service 
act.  Cases  under  this  act  are  of  three  general  kinds — first, 
the  violation  of  the  act  by  the  military  eligibles  themselves; 
that  is,  the  failure  to  register  in  accordance  with  the  regis- 
tration system  under  the  draft,  the  failure  to  file  a  question- 
naire, the  making  of  false  exemption  claims,  the  failure  to 
report  for  examination,  etc.  As  soon  as  a  man  becomes  a 
deserter,  he  comes  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  military 
authorities  and  is  turned  over  to  them.  Up  to  that  point, 
however,  if  he  does  not  fully  comply  with  the  law  and  the 
Selective-Service  Regulations,  he  is  subject  to  prosecution 
by  this  department.  As  the  main  object  of  the  law  is  the 
raising  of  an  army  and  not  the  filling  of  a  prison,  the  depart- 
ment seeks  to  deliver  to  the  military  authorities  for  military 
service  all  offenders  subject  to  military  service  and  physically 
fit  therefor,  except  those  who  willfully  and  rebelliously  refuse 
military  service  and  can  be  subjected  to  substantial  punish- 
ment. 

The  second  class  of  cases  concerns  the  acts  of  those  who,  not 
themselves  subject  to  military  service,  induce  violations  of 
the  act,  such  as  making  false  exemption  claims  for  others, 
inducing  others  to  resist  military  service  or  evade  the  law. 
This  classification  also  includes  violations  of  duty  on  the 
part  of  members  of  the  exemption  boards. 

The  third  class  of  cases  relates  to  the  violation  of  those 
sections  which  aim  to  protect  training  and  mobilization 
camps  from  the  evil  influence  of  the  liquor  traffic  or  pros- 
titution within  the  neighborhood  of  the  camp.  The  first  class 
of  cases  has  thrown  upon  the  representatives  of  this  depart- 
ment throughout  the  country  an  immense  amount  of  work. 
This  work  has  consisted  in  part  of  prosecuting  deliberate 
violations  of  the  law.  In  far  larger  measure,  however,  it 
has  consisted  in  locating,  apprehending,  and  delivering  to 
local  boards  or  Army  officials  many  thousands  of  men  who 


52  THE  WEB 

for  various  reasons  have  failed  to  appear  for  physical  ex- 
amination, failed  to  file  questionnaires,  etc.  Down  to  July 
1,  1918,  the  department  had  thns  investigated  220,747  cases 
of  this  character  and  caused  induction  into  military  service 
of  23,439  men. 

A  curious  personal  quality  attaches  to  the  study  of  the 
work  of  the  American  Protective  League,  which  is  perhaps 
attributable  to  the  fact  that  all  the  members  were  amateurs 
only  and  altogether  unpaid.  No  doubt,  did  space  and  for- 
mal limitations  permit,  a  very  widespread  comment  on  the 
personal  relations  of  the  members  of  the  League  to  the 
League  itself  would  be  acceptable  to  many  readers. 
Within  the  limits  available,  however,  a  certain  martial 
severity  and  impersonality  must  be  employed.  None  the 
less,  there  ought  to  be  some  brief  mention  made  of  the  work 
of  the  National  Directors  after  the  establishment  of  the 
Washington  office.  In  this  connection  it  is  fitting  that  the 
names  of  those  men  should  be  mentioned  who  labored  so 
earnestly  and  so  well  to  make  the  work  of  A,  P.  L.  of  vital 
importance  in  the  winning  of  the  war. 

NATIONAL  DIRECTORS  AND  OFFICERS  OF  ADMINISTRA- 
TION OF  THE  AMERICAN  PROTECTIVE  LEAGUE 

A.  M.  Briggs,  Chairman 
Charles  Daniel  Frey 
Victor  Elting 

National  Directors  November,  1917 

S.  S.  Doty 

In  charge  Bureau  of  Organization  Fel)ruary,  1918 

Captain  George  P.  Braun,  Jr. 

In  charge  Bureau  of  Investigation  June,  1918 

Charles  F.  Lorenzen 

In  charge  Bureau  of  Investigation  September,  1918 

James  D.  Stover 

In  charge  Bureau  of  Administration  Septemler,  1918 

Daniel  V.  Casey 

Editor  of  The  Spy  Glass  May,  1918 

Lieutenant  Urban  A.  Lavery 

In  charge  A.  P.  L.  branch  at  Military 

Intelligence  April,  1918 

Captain  John  T.  Evans 

In  charge  A.  P.  L.  branch  at  Military 

Intelligence  September,  1918 

I 


THE  LEAGUE  IN  WASHINGTON  53 

The  enormous  growth  of  the  American  Protective  League 
in  so  short  a  time  is  sufficient  e\ddence  in  itself  that  a  vast, 
pressing  need  existed  for  the  service  it  rendered.  Indeed, 
the  great  local  activity  of  the  League  became  a  national 
activity  in  record  time.  Reports  piled  in  from  all  over  the 
country ;  the  detail  of  correspondence  became  enormous ;  the 
filing  of  records  an  endless  task.  All  at  once  the  National 
Directors  of  the  American  Protective  League  found  they 
had  taken  over  a  business — one  of  the  largest  businesses 
with  which  any  one  of  them  had  ever  been  identified.  It 
w^ould  not  be  too  much  to  say  that  they  worked  day  and 
night  for  a  long  period.  Their  task  was  a  very  heavy  one, 
but  they  brought  to  it  a  knowledge  of  large  business  affairs 
and  a  quality  of  perseverance  which  saw  them  through. 

The  original  headquarters  of  the  League  were  at  1537  Eye 
Street,  Northwest,  an  old  Washington  residence — a  quaint 
and  none  too  convenient  business  home.  All  the  directors 
lived  in  the  upper  part  of  this  building,  and  such  was  the 
crowded  and  impractical  form  of  Washington  life  at  the 
time  that  they  were  glad  to  sleep  and  sometimes  cook  their 
meals  in  the  same  building  where  they  did  their  w^ork.  Such 
a  thing  as  rest  or  leisure  were  unknown  for  two  years'  time. 
No  one  who  has  not  been  in  part  acquainted  with  Washing- 
ton in  war  times  knows  the  handicap  under  which  all  such 
work  needed  to  be  done.  Transportation,  living  accommo- 
dations, clerical  help — everything,  in  that  period  of  the  war, 
became  a  problem  or  an  obstacle  of  a  very  considerable  sort. 
It  was  faith  and  enthusiasm  which  carried  these  men  through, 
as  w^as  the  case  with  their  associates  all  over  America. 

So,  gradually,  from  this  central  office,  the  web  of  the 
American  Protective  League  was  extended  until  it  reached 
into  every  state  and  territory  of  the  Union,  and  until  each 
line  of  communication  was  one  of  interchange  of  intelligence 
from  and  to  the  central  headquarters.  It  is  only  by  refer- 
ence to  the  portion  of  this  history  marked  as  ''The  Four 
Winds" — showing  briefs  of  reports  from  all  over  the  Union 
— that  any  just  knowledge  can  be  gained  of  the  tremendous 
volume  of  work  done  by  the  central  headquarters.  Nor  does 
the  assemblage  offered  give  more  than  a  mere  indication  of 
that  volume,  because  thousands  of  reports  have,  for  reasons 
of  space,  received  no  notice  whatever,  unfair  as  that  must 


54  THE  WEB 

always  seem  to  everyone  identified  with,  the  compilation  of 
this  history. 

In  the  fall  of  1918,  headquarters  were  moved  from  1537 
Eye  Street  to  1719  H  Street,  Northwest,  another  old  time 
Washington  residence  of  stately  sort,  which  remained  the 
home  of  the  National  Headquarters  until  the  signing  of  the 
Armistice  and  the  dissolution  of  the  League  itself.  Here 
Mr.  Briggs,  Captain  Frey  and  Mr.  Elting  remained  until  the 
end  of  the  game  in  charge  of  a  loyal  band  of  workers.  For 
all  of  these  men,  and  those  associated  with  them,  there  re- 
main the  recollection  of  a  hectic  two  years  of  high  speed 
work,  in  connection  with,  financial  loss  to  everyone  en- 
gaged in  it. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  LAW  AND  ITS  NEW  TEETH 

Insufficiency  of  the  Espionage  Laws  at  the  Outbreak  of  the 
War  —  Getting  Results  —  The  Amended  Espionage  Act  — 
The  Law  of  1798  Revived  —  Statement  of  the  Attorney 
Greneral  of  the  United  States. 

If  predisposed  to  alien  enemy  sympathy,  a  critic  might 
declare  that  the  League  was  made  up  of  individual  bucca- 
neers, who  did  high-handed  things  and  escaped  punishment 
therefor  only  because  of  the  general  confusion  due  to  a  state 
of  war.  Nothing  could  be  more  unjust  or  farther  from  the 
truth  than  such  a  belief.  On  the  contrary,  the  League  and 
the  Department  of  Justice  as  well  felt  continually  held  back 
and  hampered  by  respect  for  laws  admittedly  inadequate. 

We  had  matured  a  great  system  of  jurisprudence,  suffi- 
cient for  ordinary  needs.  Moreover,  when  war  began,  we 
had  passed  more  laws  adjusted  to  the  new  needs ;  but  it  is  a 
curious  fact  that,  threatened  as  we  were  by  Germany's  per- 
fected system  of  espionage  and  propaganda,  we  had  no  actual 
statute  by  which  we  adequately  could  cope  with  it  until  May, 
1918 — more  than  a  year  after  we  went  to  war,  and  less  than 
six  months  before  the  end  of  the  war. 

In  the  spring  of  1918,  the  National  Directors  began,  under 
the  editorship  of  Daniel  V.  Casey,  the  issue  of  a  League  or- 
gan or  confidential  bulletin,  called  ''The  Spy  Glass."  The 
first  number  of  the  publication,  in  June  of  that  year,  took 
up  the  amended  Espionage  Act,  which  was  the  base  of  prac- 
tically all  of  the  A.  P.  L.  and  D.  J.  work  during  the  war. 
This  amendment  rebuilt  and  stiffened  the  original  Espionage 
Act  of  June  15,  1917,  which  had  been  found  insufficient,  and 
*'put  teeth  in  the  law,"  as  the  Attorney  General's  office 
phrased  it.  "The  Spy  Glass"  printed  a  digest  of  the  new 
enactment,  which  is  of  essential  interest  at  this  point  of  the 
League's  story  as  it  determined  the  whole  character  of  the 

55 


56  THE  WEB 

League's  later  activities.  This  summarization  of  the  Espion- 
age Act  is  printed  as  Appendix  C  in  the  present  volume. 

Up  to  the  close  of  1917,  we  had  had,  duly  amended,  many 
national  statutes  covering  treason  and  sedition,  foreign  and 
hostile  connections,  pretending  to  be  an  officer,  enticing  to 
desertion  or  strikes,  trespassing  at  military  places,  falsely 
claiming  citizenship,  aiding  or  counseling  offense,  wearing 
uniform  unlawfully,  conspiracy,  neutrality,  counterfeiting 
seals,  use  of  mails,  trading  with  the  enemy,  censorship,  for- 
eign language  news  item's,  sabotage,  etc.,  as  well  as  many 
specific  enactments  controlling  persons  liable  for  military 
service,  and  covering  the  increase  of  the  army,  the  questions 
of  evasion,  desertion,  etc.  These  powers,  broad  as  they  were 
already,  were  extended  under  the  blanket  powder  of  the 
Articles  of  War,  to  cover  fraud,  desertion,  mutiny,  insub- 
ordination, misbehavior  before  the  enemy,  traitors  and  spies, 
murder,  rape  and  other  crimes,  and  the  general  conduct  and 
dicipline  of  those  in  military  service. 

Not  even  all  these  laws,  however,  were  found  to  stand  the 
extreme  demands  put  on  the  country  by  thousands  of  new 
and  wholly  unforeseen  exigencies.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  one 
of  the  most  useful  of  all  our  laws  against  enemy  aliens  and 
spies  was  one  not  up-to-date  at  all,  but  dating  back  to  Revo- 
lutionary times ;  that  is  to  say,  July  6,  1798  !^ 

This  old  law  was  unearthed  by  the  agents  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice.  It  gave  almost  blanket  powers  to  the  Pres- 
ident of  the  United  States,  and  it  was  under  the  President 's 
proclamations,  based  on  that  old  law,  that  most  of  the  early 
internment  arrests  were  made.  The  old  law,  long  disused, 
was  found  to  work  perfectly  still!  It  was  extended  in  force 
by  the  regulations  controlling  enemy  aliens.^ 

It  became  the  duty  of  the  newly  organized  League  to  take 
on  the  accumulation  of  testimony  under  all  these  new  laws ; 
and  w^hat  that  was  to  mean  may  be  forecast  from  the  com- 
ment of  the  Attorney  General  of  the  United  States  in  his 
annual  report  for  1918 : 

The  so-called   Espionage  Act   contains   a  variety   of  provi- 
sions on  different  subjects,  such  as  neutrality,  protection  of 


1  See  Appendix  D  for  text  of  this  law. 

*  See  Appendix  E  for  text  of  the  President's  proclamation  for  the 
regulation  of  alien  enemies. 


THE  LAW  AND  ITS  NEW  TEETH  57 

ships  in  harbor,  spj  activities,  unlawful  military  expeditions, 
etc.  Most  of  the  cases  which  have  arisen,  however,  presenting 
the  most  complex  problems,  have  been  under  the  third  section 
of  Title  I  of  this  act,  which  is  aimed  at  disloyal  and  danger- 
ous propaganda. 

This  section  3  was  amended  by  a  law  which  became  effective 
May  18,  1918,  commonly  called  the  Sedition  Act,  which  greatly 
broadened  the  scope  of  the  original  act  and  brought  under  its 
prohibitions  many  new  types  of  disloyal  utterance.  The  use 
which  our  enemies  have  made  of  propaganda  as  a  method  of 
warfare  is  especially  dangerous  in  any  country  governed  by 
public  opinion.  During  the  first  three  years  of  the  war,  the 
period  of  our  neutrality,  the  German  Government  and  its  sym- 
pathizers expended  here  a  vast  amount  of  money  in  carrying 
on  different  types  of  propaganda,  and  these  activities  are  a  , 
matter  of  public  knowledge.  During  our  participation  in  the 
war,  section  3  and  its  later  amendment  have  been  the  only 
weapons  available  to  this  Government  for  the  suppression  of 
insidious  propaganda,  and  it  is  obvious  that  no  more  difficult 
task  has  been  placed  upon  our  system  of  law  than  the  endeavor 
to  distinguish  between  the  legitimate  expression  of  opinion  and 
those  types  of  expression  necessarily  or  deliberately  in  aid  of 
the  enemy.  The  number  of  complaints  under  this  law  pre- 
sented to  the  Department  of  Justice  has  been  incredibly  large. 

Such,  then,  was  the  ultimate  machinery  of  our  national 
laws  when,  late,  but  with  such  speed  as  a  willing  Congress 
could  give  after  the  gauntlet  was  flung  and  the  issue  joined, 
we  began  to  face  in  dead  earnest  the  peril  of  the  times.  We 
now  had  at  last  a  full  set  of  laws  with  teeth  in  them.  But 
it  was  a  tremendous  burden  that  the  older  institutions  of 
our  administrative  machinery  had  to  carry.  In  sooth,  the 
load  was  too  much.  The  machinerj^  buckled  under  it.  "We 
could  not  do  the  work  we  had  to  get  done. 

That  work  was  more  than  ever  had  been  asked  of  any 
nation  of  the  world.  We  had  a  mixed  population  of  wholly 
unknown  disposition.  Some  said  we  delayed  going  to  war 
for  so  long  because  we  were  not  sure  our  people  would  back 
the  Government.  That,  surely,  could  be  the  only  reason  for 
the  delay.  All  the  races  of  the  world  were  seething  in  rage 
and  jealousy.  We  had  racial  war  within  our  borders.  We 
could  not  count  on  our  own  friends.  We  could  not  predict 
as  to  what  percent  of  men  would  be  loyal  to  our  flag.  We 
had  two  million  men  of  German  blood  inside  our  borders, 


58  THE  WEB 

guaranteed  by  their  Kaiser  to  be  loyal  to  Germany.  And 
long  before  we  had  gone  to  war,  we  had  had  abundant  proof 
of  their  disloyalty  to  us,  of  their  hatred  for  Britain  and 
France,  and  their  discontent  with  our  own  neutrality.  We 
had  openly  been  warned  by  the  German  Kaiser  that  he 
counted  on  the  loyalty  to  Germany  of  many  or  most  of  these 
men.  Fear  alone  held  the  average  pro-German  back.  But 
it  did  not  hold  back  their  seasoned  spies  and  the  agents  who 
worked  under  cover.  The  sudden  cessation  of  pro-German 
talk  which  fell  when  we  declared  war  deceived  none  but  the 
pacifists.  The  boasts  of  German- Americans  as  to  their  hold- 
ings in  Liberty  Bonds  deceived  not  at  all  the  men  who  had 
sat  and  listened  on  the  inside ;  for  even  at  this  time  the  rec- 
ords were  piling  up — records  of  private  acts  and  words  of 
treason  to  America  which  had  been  noted  by  the  A.  P.  L. 
The  full  record  of  German  craft  and  duplicity,  of  treachery 
and  treason  to  America,  never  will  be  made  public.  It  was 
alike  a  loathsome  and  a  dangerous  thing. 

Obviously,  the  hands  of  our  Government  sorely  needed 
upholding.  Who  was  to  do  that?  Who  would  apply  all 
these  laws  now  that  we  had  them?  Who  should  watch  two 
million  tight-mouthed  men  whose  homes  were  here  but  whose 
hearts  were  still  in  Germany?  Who  could  cope  with  300,000 
spies,  in  part  trained  and  paid  spies,  many  of  whom  were 
sent  over  to  America  long  before  Germany  declared  the  war 
which  was  ''forced"  on  her? 

That  was  what  the  American  Protective  League  already 
was  doing  when  war  was  declared ;  it  is  what  it  has  done  ever 
since,  loyalty,  patiently,  indefatigably,  to  an  enormous  and 
unknown  extent,  in  an  unbelievable  variety  of  detail.  If 
ever  you  have  held  its  members  irresponsible  or  deemed  them 
actuated  by  any  but  good  motives,  cease  to  do  so  now.  Be- 
yond all  men  of  this  generation  they  have  proven  that  pa- 
triotism is  not  dead. 

The  enforcement  of  the  President's  proclamation  govern- 
ing the  conduct  of  enemy  aliens  in  this  country  entailed  a 
tremendous  amount  of  D.  J.  work,  the  larger  part  of  which 
devolved  upon  the  agents  of  the  League.  Thousands  of  in- 
vestigations of  alien  Germans  were  made  under  its  provi- 
sions. Numerically  speaking,  however,  the  work  in  that  im- 
peratively necessary  line  yielded  to  the  more  thankless  labor 
of  slacker  and  deserter  hunting. 


THE  LAW  AND  ITS  NEW  TEETH  59 

The  function  of  th.e  League  in  all  these  matters  is  obvious. 
No  ease  at  law  will  "stick"  unless  supported  by  competent 
testimony.  "We  have  seen  that  the  League  was  organized  for 
the  collection  of  evidence,  and  for  nothing  else.  Limited  as 
its  power  was,  it  really  saved  the  day  for  our  hard-pressed 
country.  It  increased  our  Army  by  many  thousands  of 
evaders  whom  it  found  and  turned  over  to  the  military 
authorities.  It  put  hundreds  of  aliens  into  internment.  It 
apprehended  plotters  and  prevented  consummation  of  con- 
spiracies beyond  number.  It  kept  down  the  danger  of  that 
large  disloyal  element,  and  held  Germany  in  America  safe 
while  we  went  on  with  the  open  business  of  war  in  the  field. 
It  is  by  no  means  too  much  to  say  that  much  of  the  Kaiser's 
disappointment  over  his  Germxan-American  revolt  was  due 
not  so  much  to  any  loyalty  to  the  American  flag — for  of  all 
of  our  racial  representatives,  the  Germans  are  the  most  clan- 
nishly  and  tenaciously  loyal  to  their  own  former  flag — as  it 
was  to  fear  of  the  silent  and  stern  hand  searching  out  in  the 
dark  and  taking  first  one  and  then  another  German  or  pro- 
German  away  from  the  scenes  that  erstwhile  had  known  him. 
It  was  fear  that  held  our  enemy  population  do^vn — fear  and 
nothing  else.  It  was  the  League's  silent  and  mysterious 
errand  to  pile  up  good  reason  for  that  fear. 

At  the  crack  of  war,  certain  hundreds  of  dangerous  aliens 
were  interned  at  once.  They  simply  vanished,  that  was  all, 
behind  the  walls  of  camps  or  of  prisons.  It  will  be  mistaken 
mercy  if  we  shall  not  deport  thousands  more  when  we  shall 
have  the  time  deliberately  to  do  that.  Fear  is  the  one  thing 
such  men  understand.  Honor  and  loyalty,  terms  interde- 
pendent and  inseparable,  are  unknown  to  them.  Too  many 
Germans  loved  America  only  because  they  made  money 
easily  here.  Their  real  flag  still  was  across  the  sea,  except 
as  they  had  raised  it  here  in  their  churches  and  their  schools. 

It  was  sometimes  rumored  that  many  spies  were  shot 
secretly  in  America.  That  would  have  been  done  in  Ger- 
many— as  witness  the  deaths  of  Edith  Cavell  and  others. 
It  was  not  done  here.  We  did  not  kill  a  single  spy,  a  single 
traitor, — more  is  the  pity.  By  reason  of  the  fact  that  we 
had  outspied  Germany's  vaunted  espionage,  we  nipped  in 
the  bud  none  knows  how  many  plots  and  conspiracies  which 
otherwise  would  have  matured  in  ruin  to  life  and  property. 


60  THE  WEB 

We  did  not  shoot  known  spies,  but  we  garroted  them  in  the 
dark  and  hurried  them  to  jail.  That  agency  of  the  law  is 
best,  after  all,  which  keeps  crime  from  becoming  crime.  We 
did  not  wait  for  overt  acts — we  filled  our  prisons  before  the 
acts  were  done!  That  is  why  the  public  was  obliged  to  ro- 
mance as  to  German  spies.  They  are  in  jail.  The  report  of 
the  Department  of  Justice  itself,  of  June,  1918,  on  these  war 
activities  will  in  this  connection  prove  interesting  reading: 

During  the  period  of  American  neutrality  many  persons 
were  prosecuted  for  criminal  acts  connected  with  efforts  to  aid 
the  belligerents.  Some  of  these  cases  were  still  pending  when 
the  United  States  declared  war  on  Germany.  A  very  satis- 
factory standard  of  success  was  attained  in  the  ante-bellum 
prosecutions.  Almost  before  the  ink  had  dried  on  the  proclama- 
tion of  April  6,  1917,  a  select  company  of  dangerous  Germans 
were  gathered  in  by  the  United  States  Marshals.  These 
prisoners  were  believed  to  be  potential,  and  in  some  cases 
actual  leaders  of  pro-German  plots  and  propaganda.  Sub- 
sequent discoveries  have  quite  fully  confirmed  this  belief. 
Recently  a  most  authoritative  document  was  found  to  contain 
among  other  matters  the  names  of  several  gentlemen  whom  the 
German  Government  trusted  to  carry  on  its  work  here  un- 
officially after  the  withdrawal  of  the  ofiicial  representatives. 
Of  these,  all  were  arrested  on  April  6,  1917,  save  one  who  had 
already  left  the  country.  This  disposal  of  the  German  leaders 
had  effects  which  have  been  continually  reflected  in  the  dis- 
jointed and  sporadic  character  of  hostile  outbreaks. 

One  of  the  most  recent,  most  novel,  and  most  important  of 
the  Department's  efforts  is  the  denaturalization  of  disloyal 
citizens  of  foreign  origin.  Many  natives  of  Germany  or  Aus- 
tria, sheltered  from  summary  internment  by  their  acquired 
citizenship  and  clever  enough  to  avoid  the  commission  of 
actual  crime,  have  insulted  and  injured  this  government  at 
every  opportunity.  Fortnnately  the  naturalization  law  con- 
tains a  clause  permitting  the  cancellation  of  citizenship  papers 
o'btained  hy  fraud.  Without  waiting  for  further  legislation, 
which  is  apparently  on  the  way,  the  Department  has  assailed 
a  number  of  defendants  believed  to  have  made  fraudulent 
mental  reservations  of  loyalty  to  their  native  countries.  Sev- 
eral of  these  cases  have  already  ended  victorfously  for  the 
government.  More  than  one  defeated  defendant  has  been 
interned. 

Meanwhile  the  summary  arrests  have  continued.  From  week 
to  week  through  1917  their  numbers  steadily  increased.    Since 


THE  LAW  AND  ITS  NEW  TEETH  61 

about  the  beginning  of  1918,  the  rate  has  been  more  nearly 
constant. 

Extremists  have  advocated  the  universal  internment  of  alien 
enemies,  somewhat  after  the  English  practice.  Now,  Great 
Britain  interned  permanently  rather  fewer  than  seventy  thou- 
sand alien  enemies.  The  United  States  would  be  compelled  to 
intern  at  least  eight  hundred  thousand  Germans  and  more  than 
twice  as  many  Austrians.  The  colossal  expense  of  maintain- 
ing this  horde  in  idleness  —  civilian  prisoners  of  war  are  far 
more  useless  than  convicts,  because  they  may  not  be  forced 
to  work  —  is  too  obvious  to  need  discussion. 

More  temperate  critics  say  that  there  have  been  too  few 
arrests,  too  low  a  proportion  of  internments,  and  too  high  a 
proportion  of  paroles.  As  to  the  first  and  second  charges,  it 
is  a  sufficient  answer  that  conditions  have  improved  instead 
of  becoming  worse.  A  policeman's  record  should  not  be  judged 
by  the  number  of  people  he  has  put  in  jail,  but  by  the  kind  of 
order  maintained  on  his  beat. 

In  his  annual  report,  issued  December  5,  1918,  subsequent 
to  the  signing  of  the  armistice,  the  Attorney  General  stated 
that  six  thousand  alien  enemies  had  been  arrested  on  presi- 
dential warrants,  based  on  the  old  law  of  1798.  Of  these,  a 
"considerable  number"  were  placed  in  the  internment  camps 
in  charge  of  the  Army.  The  majority  of  these  w^ere  German 
men  and  women,  with  a  certain  number  of  Austro-Hungar- 
ians.  He  concludes :  "  I  do  not  want  to  create  the  impression 
that  there  is  no  danger  from  German  spies  and  German 
sympathizers.  There  are  thousands  of  persons  in  this  coun- 
try who  would  injure  the  United  States  in  this  war  if  they 
could  do  so  with  safety  to  themselves.  However,  they  are 
no  more  anxious  to  be  hanged  than  you  are. ' ' 

The  foregoing  will  show,  to  any  student  of  the  strange  and 
complex  situation  which  has  confronted  America  at  home 
these  last  four  years,  the  main  facts  as  to  the  emergencies 
we  met  and  the  means  by  which  we  met  them. 

The  surprising  thing  is  that  we  Americans  have  not  known 
ourselves!  A  thoughtful  study  of  the  American  Protective 
League  is  not  a  mere  yawning  over  phrases  of  the  law  any 
more  than  it  is  a  mere  dipping  into  exciting  or  mystifying 
experiences.  It  is  more  than  that.  It  is  an  excursion  into 
a  new  and  unexplored  region  in  America — into  the  very 
heart  of  America  itself. 


CHAPTER  VI 

GERMAN  PROPAGANDA 

How  the  Poison  was  Spread  —  The  Press  —  The  Pulpit  — 
The  Word-of -Mouth  Rumor  —  Various  Canards  Directed 
Against  American  Morale  —  Stories  and  Instances  of  the 
Hun's  Subtlety. 

Germany  made  two  mistakes — one  in  beginning  the  war, 
the  other  in  losing  it.  The  world  has  reckoned  with  her  far 
otherwise  than  as  she  hoped.  Now  she  learns  what  it  is  to 
feel  defeat.  Shrewd  as  the  shrewdest,  more  patient  than  the 
most  patient,  not  lacking  courage  while  victory  was  with  her 
— yet  always  showdng  that  peculiar  German  clumsiness  of 
intellect — Germany  fought  with  trained  skill  on  both  sides 
the  sea.  The  world  know^s  the  story  of  the  battles  in  France. 
Let  us  now  study  the  battles  fought  in  silence  in  America. 

In  actual  practice  the  various  secret  methods  which  the 
Germans  employed  in  America  could  not  always  be  defined 
one  from  the  other.  A  certain  confusion  and  over-lapping 
existed  between  the  spy  systems  and  those  of  propaganda 
and  sabotage.  Often  one  man  might  practice  all  three. 
The  purpose  of  this  chapter  is  to  take  the  humblest  form 
of  German  secret  work  in  America,  that  practiced  by  the 
least  skilled  and  most  numerous  branch  of  her  spies — the 
sort  of  thing  which  usually  is  classified  as  propaganda. 

Let  no  one  undervalue  the  work  of  propaganda.  No  army 
is  better  than  its  morale,  and  no  army 's  morale  is  better  than 
that  of  the  people  which  send  it  to  the  front.  The  entire 
purpose  of  enemy  propaganda  is  to  lessen  the  morale  either 
of  an  army  or  a  people;  and  that  precisely  was  Germany's 
purpose  with  us. 

Anything  is  good  propaganda  which  makes  a  people  nerv- 
ous, uneasy  or  discontented.  Many  of  the  stories  which  Ger- 
many spread  in  America  seemed  clumsy  at  first,  they  were 
so  easily  detected.     Yet  they  did  their  work,  even  though 

62 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  63 

( 

sometimes  it  would  have  seemed  that  the  rumors  put  out 
were  against  Germany  and  not  for  her.  These  rumors,  re- 
peated and  varied,  did  serve  a  great  purpose  in  America — 
they  made  us  restless  and  uneasy.    That  certainly  is  true. 

One  of  the  favorite  objects  of  the  German  propaganda  was 
the  Red  Cross  work.  Hardly  any  American  but  has  heard 
one  or  other  story  about  the  Red  Cross.  The  result  has  been 
a  very  considerable  lessening  of  the  public  confidence  in  that 
great  organization.  The  average  man  never  runs  down  any 
rumor  of  this  sort.  At  first  he  does  not  believe  what  he 
hears.  At  the  fourth  or  fifth  story  of  different  sorts,  all 
aiming  at  one  object,  he  begins  to  hesitate,  to  doubt.  With- 
out any  question,  the  Red  Cross  has  suffered  much  from 
German  propaganda.  Not  that  this  organization  should  be 
called  perfect,  for  such  was  not  the  case  with  any  war  organ- 
ization. Not  that  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  work  was  perfect,  for  it 
was  far  from  that.  But  the  point  is  that  all  of  these  organ- 
izations, all  the  war  charities,  all  the  war  relief  organizations, 
were  more  nearly  perfect  than  German  propaganda  has  al- 
lowed us  to  believe.  The  most  cruel  and  malicious  state- 
ments against  the  Red  Cross,  wholly  without  foundation, 
were  made,  with  apparent  feeling  of  all  lack  of  responsibility, 
by  German-loving  persons  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  A 
complaint  came  to  Washington  Headquarters  all  the  way 
from  Portland,  Oregon.     Comment  is  unnecessary: 

I  am  informed  that  one  Bertha  A ,  who  is  in  the 

Government  service,  Bureau  of  Aircraft  Production,  Executive 
Department,  Cable  Section,  oflSce  in  "D"  Building,  A%  Missouri 
Avenue,  Washington,  D.  C,  has  written  a  letter  to  a  friend  of 
hers  here  that  a  w^ard  in  one  of  the  hospitals  in  Washington 
had  been  set  aside  for  some  seventy-five  girls  who  were  work- 
ing in  the  different  bureaus  in  Washington  and  had  become 
pregnant  since  arriving  in  Washington;  and  that  it  was  ru- 
mored that  there  were  about  three  hundred  in  addition  to  the 
above  who  had  been  sent  home  for  the  same  reason.  Would 
suggest  that  she  be  interviewed.  We  will  look  up  her  antece- 
dents here  and  if  possible  secure  the  letter  which  she  has 
written  or  copy  thereof.  Upon  being  advised  that  such  a 
letter  had  been  written,  I  interviewed  the  husband  of  the 
lady  to  whom  the  letter  was  written,  he  being  bailiff  in  one 
of  the  circuit  courts  here,  and  he  stated  that  the  quotation  as 
made  above  was  substantially  correct. 


64  THE  WEB 

Nearly  everyone  has  heard  the  story  of  the  Red  Cross 
sweater  which  had  a  five-dollar  bill  pinned  to  it  for  the 
lucky  unknown  soldier  who  might  be  the  recipient.  This 
sweater  is  always  reported  to  have  been  sold  and  to  have 
turned  up  in  some  part  of  America  with  the  proof  attached 
to  it.  In  no  instance  has  there  been  any  foundation  for  this 
rumor.  A  like  baselessness  marks  the  stories  of  Red  Cross 
graft  and  misappropriation  of  funds  and  waste  of  money. 
No  doubt  there  was  a  certain  amount  of  inefficiency  in  this 
work;  but  that  the  Red  Cross  was  looted  or  conducted  by 
dishonest  persons  was  never  believed  to  be  true  even  by  the 
German  agents  who  started  the  stories. 

During  the  time  of  the  influenza  epidemic,  a  common  story 
was  that  doctors  had  been  found  spreading  influenza  germs 
in  the  cantonments.  It  was  reported,  as  no  doubt  every 
reader  ^vill  remember,  that  two  doctors  had  been  shot  in  one 
post.  Sometimes  the  story  would  come  from  a  man  who  got 
it  from  an  enlisted  man  who  had  been  one  of  the  firing  squad 
who  had  executed  several  doctors  in  this  way.  There  was 
not  a  word  of  truth  in  any  of  this.  The  inoculation  propa- 
ganda was  German  propaganda,  pure  and  simple.  It  might 
not  seem  clear  how  such  mendacity  could  be  of  direct  help 
to  Germany ;  but  it  had  this  result — it  made  American  moth- 
ers and  fathers  more  uneasy  about  their  sons.  It  made 
them  want  to  keep  their  boys  at  home. 

The  powdered  glass  rumor  was  one  of  the  most  widely 
spread  instances  of  German  propaganda.  "Who  has  not 
heard  it  divulged  in  secrecy  by  some  woman,  with  the  in- 
junction that  not  a  word  must  be  said  about  it?  A  German 
nurse  had  been  detected  putting  powdered  glass  in  the 
rolled  surgical  bandages  in  the  Red  Cross  work  rooms.  She 
had  disappeared  before  she  could  be  arrested,  and  she  had 
not  left  her  name.  That  mysterious  German  woman  who 
worked  with  the  Red  Cross  is  still  absent.  The  rumors  of 
powdered  glass  in  bandages  have  been  practically  ground- 
less— only  one  division,  that  in  upper  New  Jersey,  reports 
any  case  of  that  sort  actually  run  down.  The  charges  of 
powdered  glass  in  food  sent  to  the  soldiers  or  put  in  tinned 
goods  have  been  found  equally  baseless.  Two  cases  of  glass 
found  in  food  stuffs  are  authentically  reparted, — both  acci- 
dents, and  the  glass  was  broken  and  not  powdered. 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  65 

The  charges  of  poisoned  wells  around  cantonments  was 
another  canard.  Rumors  came  out  that  horses,  and  men 
also,  had  been  killed  by  the  poisoned  water.  The  entire 
investigating  force  of  the  United  States  has  found  one  case 
of  poisoned  water  in  a  horse  trough  in  West  Virginia — and 
no  horse  drank  of  it.  The  charges  about  poisoned  court- 
plaster  were  proved  to  be  equally  groundless — indeed,  they 
would  seem  to  be  of  small  reason  in  any  case,  because,  if 
Germany  was  putting  out  the  court-plaster,  why  should  she 
speak  of  it ;  and  why  should  America  put  it  out  at  all  ?  The 
psychology  of  it  is  this:  anything  which  makes  the  people 
feel  uneasy  or  anxious  is  good  propaganda  for  the  enemy. 

Stories  were  spread  very  widely  at  one  time  that  Canada 
and  England  were  not  practicing  food  conservation — that  we 
were  shipping  our  food  to  England  and  she  was  eating  it 
without  reservation,  whereas  we  were  denying  ourselves 
sugar  and  butter.  Perhaps  you  had  best  talk  with  someone 
who  lived  in  England  during  the  war  as  to  the  truth  of  that. 
It  was  one  of  the  many  German  lies.  There  was  the  charge 
that  the  price  of  gasoline  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Stand- 
ard Oil  Company  was  dumping  and  wasting  large  quantities 
of  gasoline.     There  was  nothing  in  that,  of  course. 

The  report  of  Polish  pograms,  general  Jew  killing  expedi- 
tions by  the  Poles,  were  magnified  and  distorted,  all  with 
the  purpose  of  making  both  the  Poles  and  Jews  dissatisfied 
with  the  conduct  of  the  war.  Continually  these  anti-Ally 
stories  got  out,  and  always  they  were  hard  to  trace. 

This  form  of  propaganda,  spread  by  word  of  mouth,  was 
the  most  insidious  and  most  widely  spread  of  all  forms.  It 
was,  of  course,  made  the  more  easy  by  the  excited  state  of 
mind  of  the  people  during  war  times.  You  will  remember 
that  you  yourself  bought  more  newspapers  than  you  ever 
did  in  your  life — you  looked  for  new  headlines,  new  sensa- 
tions, all  the  time.  At  home,  your  wife  also  was  eager  for 
sensations,  for  the  news,  for  the  gossip.  It  was  ready  for 
her  and  every  member  of  her  family,  and  her  neighbors  and 
neighbors'  families.  The  spread  of  a  rumor  is  not  governed 
by  the  laws  of  evidence;  and  hearsay  testimony  rarely  is 
given  twice  the  same — it  always  grows. 

Into  this  form  of  German  propaganda  came  spite  work 
against  German- Americans  who  themselves  were  loyal.     A 


66  THE  WEB 

great  deal  of  League  activity  had  to  do  with  running  down 
rumors  against  persons  declared  to  be  pro-German.  Some- 
times these  things  were  found  baseless;  and  again  enough 
pro-Germanism  was  found  to  warrant  a  stern  rebuke. 

Sometimes,  public  speakers,  well  trained  in  their  tasks, 
put  out  propaganda  which  at  the  time  seemed  an  innocent 
statement  of  facts.  To  the  Lake  Placid  Club  of  New  York 
came  a  certain  '^ Belgian  officer"  who  spoke  very  good  Eng- 
lish, and  who  purported  to  be  able  to  tell  all  about  the  war. 
He  made  a  long  speech,  regarding  which  many  members  of 
the  local  Ked  Cross  complained  bitterly  to  the  American 
Protective  League.  This  man 's  talk,  while  purporting  to  be 
that  of  an  ally  of  this  country,  was  really  German  propa- 
ganda. He  denied  or  justified  German  atrocities,  deplored 
Red  Cross  knitting,  declared  it  would  take  ten  million  Amer- 
icans to  beat  the  Germans ;  that  they  were  going  into  a  hell 
of  vermin,  dirt  and  disease ;  that  our  army  as  yet  was  diffi- 
cult to  find.  There  was  a  German  orchestra  at  the  Club, 
supposed  to  have  come  from  the  Boston  Symphony  Orches- 
tra. They  all  applauded  vociferously  when  the  speaker 
made  such  statements  as,  ''After  the  war  there  will  be  a 
day  of  reckoning. ' '  Further  details,  which  proved  that  this 
speaker  really  was  spreading  German  propaganda,  led  to 
his  being  traced  to  New  York.  He  was  found  to  have  worked 
at  different  times  in  Iowa,  Kansas,  and  elsewhere.  The  last 
report  was  that  he  was  supposed  to  have  sailed  for  his  native 
country. 

There  was  no  way,  shape  nor  manner  in  which  Germany 
did  not  endeavor  to  embarrass  us.  She  had,  besides  her  care- 
fully trained  public  speakers,  her  secret  workers  who  had 
assigned  to  them  definite  objectives.  For  instance,  it  was 
known  that  the  negro  race  would  furnish  a  considerable 
number  of  soldiers  for  our  army.  A  very  wide  German 
propaganda  existed  among  the  negroes  in  Georgia  and  Caro- 
lina, and  in  such  northern  cities  as  Indianapolis,  where  large 
numbers  of  that  race  were  located.  A  certain  German  was 
indicted  under  seven  counts  for  this  manner  of  activity.  It 
was  proved  that  he  had  told  a  great  many  negro  privates  in 
the  army  that  they  would  be  mutilated  if  captured,  and 
that  they  were  going  to  starve  to  death  in  France  if  they 
ever  got  across.     The  horrors  of  war  with  the  American 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  67 

forces  were  pointed  out  to  these  simple  people;  but,  on  the 
other  hand  it  was  explained  to  them  that  if  they  would 
work  for  the  German  interests,  they  would  be  allowed  to  set 
up  a  government  of  their  own  in  America  if  Germany  won 
the  war!  They  were  told  Germany  loved  the  negroes  and 
believed  in  their  equality  with  the  white  race  in  every  way, 
and  would  support  their  government  when  once  her  war  was 
won!  One  such  secret  German  worker  among  colored  sol- 
diers and  civilians  was  M.  F of  New  York,  in- 
dicted under  seven  counts  in  June,  1918,  under  the  new 

Espionage  Law.    F put  out  much  the  same  story  to 

frighten  the  negroes  and  make  them  discontented — wholesale 
mutilation  at  the  hands  of  Germans  if  they  were  captured  in 
France.  He  declared  that  their  eyes  would  be  gouged  out 
and  their  ears  cut  off.  He  also  said  that  Germany  was  al- 
lowing our  transports  to  reach  Europe  unharmed  because 
she  wanted  a  lot  of  Americans  in  France,  where,  after  cut- 
ting off  their  supplies,  she  intended  to  starve  them  all  to 
death. 

This  looks  like  making  out  a  bad  case  for  Germany — but 

softly.     F also  said  that,  on  the  other  hand,  Germany 

did  not  want  to  kill  the  negroes  if  they  would  not  fight; 
that  if  only  they  would  work  for  Germany's  interests,  they 
should  have  their  own  country  and  their  own  government. 
Stories  like  this  were  circulated  in  the  South  and  among 

cities  in  the  North  with  a  hea^^  negro  population.    F 

was  the  first  propagandist  to  be  caught  with  the  goods.  He 
was  talking  much  with  colored  privates  in  the  draft  army. 

Of  course,  a  prime  object  of  propaganda  was  to  obstruct 
the  draft  and  to  prevent  the  shipment  of  munitions.  It 
largely  failed,  as  everyone  knows.  But  still  it  cannot  be 
said  that  Germany  did  not  invest  such  money  well  as  she 
spent  on  her  secret  pro-German  propaganda  in  America. 
She  knew  that  she  had  ruined  Russia  by  propaganda.  We 
might  further  have  learned  the  danger  of  propaganda  as  a 
weapon  had  we  heard  the  rumor  that  Germany  herself  had 
her  collapse  hastened  by  propaganda  which  Great  Britain 
managed  to  spread  among  her  people.  It  is  a  matter  of  his- 
tory that  German  propaganda  caused  the  Italian  debacle  in 
the  first  Austrian  advance  into  Italy. 

Nor  is  it  to  be  believed  that  Germany  has  ceased  in  her 


53  THE  WEB 

propaganda.  Slie  does  not  believe  herself  defeated  even 
now.  The  undying  occult  spirit  of  the  old  Teutonic  Knights 
still  lives  to-day  in  America.  Now,  you  will  begin  to  hear 
attempts  to  make  us  dislike  England,  attempts  to  incite  Ire- 
land to  revolt  against  England,  attempts  to  make  us  dislike 
France,  stories  that  England  and  France  owe  us  much  for 
everything  they  gave  us  in  the  way  of  equipment,  aeroplanes, 
munitions;  stories  that  we  will  never  get  back  any  of  the 
moneys  we  loaned  to  the  Allies;  stories  of  how  simple  and 
innocent  the  German  people  are,  how  anxious  they  are  to 
be  friendly  to  America.  That  is  all  propaganda.  By  this 
time  we  ought  to  know  how  to  value  it. 

Of  course,  the  German  language  papers  in  this  country 
were  hotbeds  of  propaganda  and  sedition.  Some  of  them 
were  suppressed  by  the  censorship,  some  by  the  indignant 
American  people  who  informed  the  courts  of  justice.  Most 
of  them  by  this  time  have  become  tame  since  they  have  seen 
the  penitentiary  sentences  imposed  upon  the  more  outspoken 
of  these  German  editors  living  in  America.  These  foreign 
language  papers  were  prominent  in  New  York,  Chicago, 
Milwaukee,  Pittsburgh,  Philadelphia,  and  other  cities.  They 
show  the  strength  of  German  sentiment  in  America.  Every 
one  of  them  was  a  center  of  propaganda,  at  first  outspoken, 
then  more  careful.  The  great  majority  of  these  papers,  in 
order  to  protect  their  business  investments,  tried  to  cover  up 
when  they  found  which  way  the  wind  was  setting.  The 
censorship  officers  were  flooded  with  complaints  against  these 
papers.  For  instance,  there  came  all  the  way  from  Indian- 
apolis a  complaint  against  a  paper  printed  in  Baltimore, 
Mary^land,  ''The  Bavarian  Weekly."  A.  P.  L.  had  many 
extended  translations  of  articles  printed  in  this  paper,  the 
general  tenor  of  which  was  a  laudation  of  Germany  and 
German  methods.  One  wonders  what  Germany  would  have 
done  to  any  American  newspaper  printed  within  the  con- 
fines of  Germany  which  might  have  expressed  such  hostile 
sentiments  against  the  country  harboring  it. 

In  addition  to  these,  there  were,  of  course,  the  English 
language  papers  which  for  one  reason  or  another  were 
covertly  or  outspokenly  in  favor  of  Germany.  Papers  all 
the  way  from  New  York  to  Pueblo,  Colorado,  were  bought 
or  were  attempted  to  be  bought  outright  by  German  capital. 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  69 

The  most  sensational  scandals  of  tliis  sort  came  out  of  New 
York. 

It  is  known  that  in  many  towns  the  German  element 
undertook  to  sow  seeds  of  discontent  in  the  minds  of  sav- 
ings bank  depositors.  Rumors  got  out — no  one  could  tell 
where  they  started — to  the  effect  that  the  United  States 
Government  was  going  to  confiscate  all  the  savings  of  the 
people ;  that  the  bonds  would  never  be  paid  off.  Of  course, 
all  this  w^as  absurd,  but  it  had  its  effect  upon  servant  girls 
and  others  who  were  loyally  putting  their  savings  into  the 
securities  of  the  government.  It  cost  a  great  deal  of  time 
and  expense  to  run  down  such  rumors. 

The  pulpit  was  a  recognized  part  of  the  German  system 
of  spy  work  in  America,  as  has  elsewhere  been  noted.  ^  It 
is  not  just  to  accuse  all  Lutheran  ministers  of  desecrating 
the  cloth  they  wore.  There  are  good  Lutheran  ministers 
who  are  loyal  Americans  without  question.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  true  that  more  charges  have  been  brought  against 
pastors  of  the  Lutheran  church,  and  charges  of  more  spe- 
cific nature,  than  against  any  other  class  or  profession  in 
our  country.  There  are  scores  andj  hundreds  of  such  re- 
ports which  came  into  the  National  Headquarters  of  the 
A.  P.  L.  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  more  especially 
those  parts  which  have  heavy  German  settlements.  These 
are  so  numerous  that  one  cannot  avoid  calling  the  Lutheran 
pulpit  in  America  one  of  the  most  active  and  poisonous 
influences  which  existed  in  America  during  the  war.  A 
sample  report  comes  in  from  the  Chief  of  the  A.  P.  L.  at 
Armour,  S.  D. : 

I  have  reported  on  five  German  Lutheran  preachers  of  this 
vicinity.  They  are  all  of  the  same  stripe  —  profess  loyalty,  but 
actions  speak  otherwise.  It  seems  strange  to  me  that  they 
have  such  an  anxiety  to  get  into  active  war  work  in  the  army 
and  navy. 

In  yet  another  and  longer  specification,  the  same  chief 
states : 

I  am  becoming  concerned  about  the  large  number  of 
reports  I  get  locally  regarding  German  Lutheran  ministers  in 
this  part  of  South  Dakota.     They  are  attempting  to   obtain 


70  THE  WEB 

positions  of  trust  in  Government  work  in  the  army  and  navy. 
/  would  not  trust  one  of  them  in  this  part  of  the  State.  We 
have  had  troutle  continually  tvith  the  German  communities 
where  these  ministers  are  located.  Twenty-nine  were  con- 
victed from  Tripp.  .  .  .  Our  Government  might  as  well 
choose  men  from  Berlin  as  to  select  German  Lutheran  min- 
isters from  this  part  of  South  Dakota.  It  seems  to  me  that 
the  A.  P.  L.  should  investigate  and  see  what  is  inducing  all 
these  German  Lutheran  ministers  to  apply  for  Government 
positions.  If  even  one  succeeds  in  obtaining  an  appointment, 
it  would  be  an  opening. 

This  matter  went  before  the  Military  Intelligence  Divi- 
sion in  Washington  and  received  proper  handling  there. 

A  report  from  Osage,  Iowa,  came  in  against  a  certain 
priest  in  another  Iowa  town.  The  entire  record  of  this 
man  is  given,  besides  other  details  regarding  his  parentage, 
his  education,  and  his  conduct  of  his  church.  ^'Previous 
to  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war,  he  upheld 
Germany  in  all  particulars.  Since  war  has  been  declared, 
he  has  been  more  careful  in  his  speech.  A  service  flag  was 
dedicated  in  our  village,  which  consists  of  but  one  street. 
The  ceremonies  were  held  in  front  of  this  man's  house.  He 
did  not  attend  the  services.  The  next  Sunday  he  roasted 
his  congregation  for  giving  money  toward  the  flag  and  told 
them  they  should  give  quite  as  much  to  the  church.  A 
committee  of  five  men  visited  him  and  invited  him  to  sub- 
scribe to  the  Third  Loan.*' 

One  of  these  clerical  gentlemen  who  have  remained  loyal 
to  the  Kaiser,  though  not  to  Christ,  is  the  Reverend  John 
Fontana,  Lutheran  clergyman  of  New  Salem,  North  Da- 
kota. He  was  convicted  for  preaching  sedition,  and  got  a 
three-year  sentence  in  a  Federal  Court.  This  did  not  deter 
his  likewise  loyal  Kaiserliche  congregation.  By  a  vote  of 
fifty-seven  to  twenty-two  the  members  decided  to  continue 
him  as  their  beloved  pastor.  Yet  this  is  what  Judge  Ami- 
don  said  to  Fontana  when  he  was  arraigned, — words  which 
ought  to  be  printed  in  large  letters  and  displayed  promi- 
nently in  every  street  of  every  city  of  every  portion  of 
America.    The  Judge  said  to  the  prisoner: 

You  received  your  final  papers  as  a  citizen  in  1898.    By  the 
oath  which  you   then  took,   you  renounced  and  abjured   all 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  71 

allegiance  to  Germany  and  the  Emperor  of  Germany,  and 
swore  that  you  would  bear  true  faith  and  allegiance  to  the 
United  States.  What  did  that  mean?  That  you  would  set 
about  earnestly  growing  an  American  soul,  and  put  away  your 
German  soul. 

Have  you  done  that?  I  do  not  think  you  have.  You  have 
cherished  everything  German  and  stifled  everything  American. 
You  have  preached  German,  prayed  German,  read  German, 
sung  German.  Every  thought  of  your  mind  and  every  emotion 
of  your  heart  through  all  these  years  has  been  German.  Your 
body  has  been  in  America,  but  your  life  has  been  in  Germany. 
You  have  influenced  others  who  have  been  under  your  ministry 
to  do  the  same  thing. 

There  have  been  a  good  many  Germans  before  me  in  the  last 
month.  They  have  lived  in  this  country,  like  yourself,  ten, 
twenty,  thirty,  forty  years,  and  they  have  had  to  give  their 
evidence  through  an  interpreter.  It  has  been  an  impressive 
part  of  the  trial.  As  I  looked  at  them  and  tried,  as  best  I 
could,  to  understand  them,  there  was  written  all  over  every 
one  of  them,  "Made  in  Germany."  American  life  had  not 
dimmed  that  mark  in  the  least. 

I  do  not  blame  you  and  these  men  alone.  I  blame  myself. 
I  blame  my  country.  We  urged  you  to  come;  we  welcomed 
you;  we  gave  you  opportunity;  we  gave  you  land;  we  con- 
ferred upon  you  the  diadem  of  American  citizenship — and 
then  we  left  you. 

When  we  get  through  with  this  war,  and  civil  liberty  is 
made  safe  once  more  upon  this  earth,  there  is  going  to  be  a 
day  of  judgment  in  these  United  States.  Foreign-born  citi- 
zens and  the  institutions  which  have  cherished  foreigners  are 
going  to  be  brought  to  the  judgment  of  this  Republic.  That 
day  of  judgment  looks  more  to  me  to-day  like  the  great  Day  of 
Judgment  than  anything  that  I  have  thought  of  for  many 
years.  There  is  going  to  be  a  separation  on  that  day  of  the 
sheep  from  the  goats.  Every  institution  that  has  been  engaged 
in  this  business  of  making  foreigners  perpetual  in  the  United 
States  will  have  to  change  — or  cease.  That  is  going  to  cut 
deep,  but  it  is  coming. 

It  must  be  pointed  out  that  in  spite  of  this  charge  of 
the  judge,  and  in  spite  of  the  sentence  of  this  minister  of 
the  gospel,  his  flock  remained  loyal  to  him  and  invited  him 
back  to  preach  when  he  got  out  of  jail ! 

It  has  always  been  charged  against  the  Germans  in 
America  that  they  were  the  most  clannish  of  all  the  for- 


72  THE  WEB 

eigners  coming  to  settle  in  this  country.  They,  longer  than 
any  other  people,  retain  their  own  institutions,  their  own 
language,  their  own  customs.  In  parts  of  the  country  there 
are  schools  which  teach  the  German  language  more  than 
they  do  the  English — a  practice  which,  in  all  likelihood, 
will  be  discontinued  w^hen  the  troops  come  back  from 
France  and  Germany.  Without  any  doubt  or  question, 
pro-German  school  teachers  were  German  propagandists, 
usually  of  the  indiscreet  and  hotheaded  sort. 

From  Terre  Haute,  Indiana,  comes  a  complaint  regarding 
Miss  Lena  Neubern — that  is  what  we  will  call  her— a  hot 
socialist  and  worse,  who  was  a  school  teacher.  Miss  Neu- 
bern had  two  brothers  in  that  city  who  refused  to  allow  an 
American  flag  to  be  placed  in  front  of  their  store,  or  to 
allow  their  clerks  to  attend  the  parade  of  the  Third  Liberty 
Loan.  A  committee  of  citizens  called  on  them  and  told 
them  '*in  strong  term  what  was  expected  of  them."  Miss 
Neubern  taught  her  school  children,  Americans,  that  the 
** Kaiser  was  just  as  good  a  man  as  President  Wilson;  that 
the  United  States  was  in  this  war,  not  for  democracy,  but 
for  commercial  supremacy;  that  the  United  States  was  as 
greedy  as  Germany;  that  we  were  controlled  by  England, 
always  the  enemy  of  the  United  States."  Miss  Neubern 
refused  to  allow  the  Star  Spangled  Banner  to  be  sung  in 
her  room,  and  did  all  she  could  to  hinder  the  sale  of  Thrift 
Stamps  among  the  children,  though  in  other  schools  large 
numbers  of  stamps  had  been  sold.  This  active  and  intelli- 
gent young  woman  pleaded  guilty  of  this  charge  and  was 
dismissed  by  the  school  board.  One  wonders  whether  the 
German  Government  would  have  stopped  at  the  dismissal 
in  a  similar  instance ! 

Another  form  of  German  propagandist  might  have  been 
foun4  higher  up  in  educational  circles.  The  faculties  of 
our  great  imiversities  have  always  been  made  up  in  part 
of  a  class  of  men  who  are  of  the  belief  that  intellect  and 
scholarship  are  best  shown  by  eccentricity  and  radicalism. 
More  than  that,  we  had  a  number  of  actual  Germans  in 
our  university  faculties  in  America.  Since  it  is  the  propo- 
sition here  to  deal  in  concrete  facts  and  not  in  mere  gen- 
eral assertions,  let  us  print  something  which  came  in, 
embodied  in  the  report  from  Champaign,  Illinois. 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  73 

Champaign,  Illinois,  is  the  home  of  the  University  of 
Illinois,  and  for  some  reason  university  towns  seem  to  act 
as  chutes  for  all  sorts  of  independent  thought.  There  are 
two  strong  German  settlements  in  Champaign  County,  and 
a  very  strong  German  settlement  in  the  city,  where  many 
residents  have  shown  very  pro-German  tendencies.  These 
German  settlements  have  their  own  German  schools,  taught 
by  their  German  Lutheran  ministers  under  the  pretense  of 
teaching  religion.  Sentiment  became  so  intense  that  the 
local  A.  P.  L.  Chief  was  requested  by  the  Government  to 
close  these  schools  if  possible.  Some  of  them  have  reopened 
since  the  armistice.  In  such  localities  the  Germans  have 
been  very  independent  and  often  quite  outspoken,  so  that 
it  was  necessary  in  many  cases  for  the  A.  P.  L.  to  use 
influence  to  prevent  violence  to  them.  There  were  only 
one  or  two  cases  where  the  citizens  got  out  of  control, 
although  many  citizens  of  German  descent  refused  to  buy 
bonds  and  made  disparaging  remarks  regarding  the  Avar. 

The  A.  P.  L.  Chief  says:  "We  were  confronted  with 
the  problem  of  ousting  five  alien  enemies  at  the  University 
of  Illinois,  two  of  them  regarded  as  dangerous.  "We  also 
had  to  handle  a  cook  at  the  aviation  barracks,  an  alien 
enemy  who  was  deliberately  wasting  food.  We  convicted 
the  wife  of  a  German  minister  in  the  Federal  Court  for 
making  disloyal  remarks.  We  had  some  difficulty  with 
Russellites,  Mennonites,  and  radical  Socialists,  but  all  have 
been  kept  in  hand.  Our  organization  consists  of  seventy- 
five  members,  but  about  twenty-five  of  us  have  done  most 
of  the  active  work."    A  good  and  worthy  twenty-five. 

The  reference  to  Russellites  and  Mennonites  covers  two 
regions  of  great  A.  P.  L.  activity.  Pastor  Russell,  as  he 
was  known,  passed  away  from  this  scene  some  time  ago, 
but  he  left  behind  him  seeds  of  discord.  He  was  perhaps 
not  so  much  disloyal  as  he  was  eccentric  and  fanatical  in 
his  mental  habit.  His  book,  ''The  Finished  Mystery,"  was 
so  open  a  plea  against  war  that  it  was  proscribed  by  the 
United  States  Government.  A.  P.  L.  operatives  ran  doAvn 
a  great  deal  of  so-called  pro-German  talk  which  originated 
in  the  Russellites.  An  instance  of  this  comes  from  Coloma, 
Michigan,  which  reports:  "Radical  socialists  became  ac- 
tive during  August,  1917.    Acting  under  instructions  from 


74  THE  WEB 

the  Department  of  Justice,  we  put  all  of  these  meetings 
out  of  business  in  the  territory  of  our  jurisdiction.  No 
more  socialist  meetings  of  any  kind  here.  We  got  infor- 
mation which  resulted  in  my  calling  upon  certain  Russell- 
ites.  Collected  five  books  of  'The  Finished  Mystery,'  and 
some  copies  of  the  *  Kingdom  News.'  Russellites  were 
watche<i,  and  they  promised  to  discontinue  activities  until 
after  the  war.    They  have  done  so. ' ' 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  following  of  the  radical 
banner  among  all  nations  of  the  world  is  an  increasing  one 
and  one  which  will  demand  great  care  on  the  part  of  the 
governments  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  Bolshevism  is 
the  great  threat  of  the  day,  and  we  shall  have  to  meet  it 
in  America  as  it  must  be  met  in  Germany  and  Russia 
before  there  can  be  any  lasting  peace. 

At  times  some  of  these  radicals  have  got  caught  in  the 
jaws  of  the  amended  Espionage  Act,  as  for  instance,  Eu- 
gene V.  Debs,  the  veteran  Socialist  candidate  for  the  presi- 
dency, who  was  given  three  concurrent  sentences  of  ten 
years  each.  Early  in  the  fall  of  1918,  Dr.  Morris  Zucker, 
a  well  known  Socialist  in  Brooklyn,  was  arrested  on  a 
charge  of  sedition  and  locked  up.  He  is  said  to  have  de- 
clared that  the  stories  of  German  atrocities  committed  by 
German  army  officers  were  not  true  and  that  they  were 
circulated  by  capitalists  in  this  country  to  further  their 
own  purposes.  Dr.  Zucker  was  of  the  belief  that  American 
soldiers  are  **make  believe"  soldiers.  On  September  6, 
1918,  in  Philadelphia,  Joseph  V.  Stillson,  secretary  of  the 
**Kova,"  a  Lithuanian  newspaper,  was  caught  by  the 
Espionage  Act  and  sentenced  to  three  years'  imprisonment 
at  Atlanta. 

In  Chicago,  in  December,  1918,  there  began  the  trial  of 
Victor  L.  Berger,  Congressman-elect  from  Milwaukee,  for 
violation  of  the  espionage  act  and  conspiracy  to  obstruct 
the  United  States  in  prosecuting  the  war  with  Germany. 
With  Berger,  four  other  Socialist  co-defendants  were  ar- 
raigned: Adolph  Germer,  National  Secretary  of  the  So- 
cialist party;  J.  Louis  Engdahl,  Editor  of  the  American 
Socialist;  William  F.  Kruse,  Secretary  of  the  draft-evading 
organization  of  the  anti-war  Socialists,  and  Irwin  St.  John 
Tucker,  a  radical  Episcopalian  rector. 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  75 

The  trial  before  Federal  Judge  Kenesaw  M.  Landis  lasted 
for  more  than  a  month  and  resulted  in  a  verdict  of  guilty 
against  all  of  the  defendants.  On  February  20, 1918,  Judge 
Landis  sentenced  the  convicted  men  to  twenty  years'  im- 
prisonment in  the  federal  penitentiary  at  Fort  Leaven- 
worth, Kansas.    In  sentencing  the  men,  Judge  Landis  said : 

Their  writings  and  utterances  fairly  represent  the  consistent, 
personal  campaigns  they  conducted  to  discredit  the  cause  of 
the  United  States  and  obstruct  its  efforts.  By  no  single  word 
or  act  did  they  offer  help  to  the  country  to  win  the  war.  It 
was  a  conscious,  continuous  plan  to  obstruct  the  country's 
military  efforts.  What  has  been  said  in  this  courtroom  by 
the  defendants  is  but  an  apology  by  them  for  obstructing  the 
country's  effort. 

The  convicted  men  were  granted  an  appeal  to  the  United 
States  Circuit  Court  of  Appeals  by  Judge  Samuel  Al- 
schuler.  In  the  upper  court  the  defendants  were  compelled 
to  give  their  personal  pledge  to  Judge  Alschuler  that 
neither  by  word  or  act  would  they  do  any  of  the  things 
for  which  they  have  been  convicted,  pending  the  final  dis- 
position of  the  case.  It  should  be  understood  and  remem- 
bered that  these  men  were  convicted  not  for  their  personal 
or  political  beliefs,  but  for  violation  of  a  law  of  the  United 
States. 

A.  P.  L.  reports  show  that  Lake  Mills,  Iowa,  had  a  state 
senator  who  advised  young  men  that  they  could  not  be 
forced  to  cross  the  water  to  fight,  nor  forced  to  buy  Liberty 
bonds.  He  also  was  alleged  to  have  obstructed  the  United 
War  Work  campaign  by  telling  a  client  that  he  did  not 
need  to  assist.  He  was  connected  with  the  Non-Partisan 
League  and  promised  the  farmers  that  they  would  secure 
control  of  the  Legislature.  Affidavits  to  this  effect  were 
handed  to  **D.  J."  The  Non-Partisan  League  was  well 
investigated  in  that  neighborhood.  The  organizer  of  the 
local  chapter  was  forced  to  buy  bonds  and  stamps  and  to 
remain  inactive  until  Peace  was  declared.  **He  moved 
away  and  never  came  back,"  says  the  local  chief. 

In  another  Lake  Mills  office,  there  was  found  by  American 
Protective  League  operatives  a  picture  drawn  by  a  rather 
good  amateur  artist  depicting  a  single  German  blowing  to 


7fi  THE  WEB 

pieces  the  head  of  an  American  column  of  troops.  Investiga- 
tion showed  that  this  picture  was  drawn  by  a  clerk  in  a 
local  store.  He  was  drafted  and  is  in  France,  and  the  report 
regarding  him  is  filed  with  "D.  J."  His  original  drawing 
is  in  the  possession  of  the  National  Directors  of  the  A.  P.  L. 
A  League  report,  simple  and  direct,  which  comes  from 
Todd  County,  Minnesota,  is  one  of  the  best  and  freest  expo- 
sitions of  our  system  of  government  and  the  character  of 
our  citizenry  that  may  be  seen  in  many  a  day.  The  college 
professor  would  be  valuable  who  coul-d  write  a  clearer  or 
more  useful  paper.    Says  the  report: 

The  Germans  of  the  country  are  about  evenly  divided  be- 
tween the  Catholic  and  Lutheran  faiths.  The  Scandinavians 
are  practically  all  Lutheran.  The  German  Catholics,  in  gen- 
eral, allied  themselves  with  loyal  element;  but  a  majority  of 
the  Lutherans,  both  German  and  Scandinavian,  gave  evidence 
of  pro-German  sympathies. 

To  complicate  matters  at  this  time,  a  political  movement 
under  socialist  leadership  showed  great  activity.  The  move- 
ment was  organized  under  the  name  of  the  Non-Partisan 
League,  with  its  platform  built  of  essentially  socialistic  planks. 
The  League  attained  a  membership  of  approximately  1,200  in 
the  summer  of  1918.  Its  representatives  and  organizers  held 
meetings  in  every  neighborhood  and  solicited  memberships. 
In  the  early  days  of  our  entry  into  the  war,  they  demanded 
the  cessation  of  hostilities;  declared  that  it  was  a  rich  man's 
war;  denounced  conscription,  and  were  guilty  of  numberless 
seditious  utterances.  Many  of  the  greater  lights  of  the  League 
came  into  the  country  and  delivered  addresses,  among  whom 
were  Townley,  Lindbergh,  Bowen,  Randall  and  others.  The 
burden  to  the  cry  of  these  men  w^as  the  iniquity  of  "Big  Busi- 
ness" and  the  wrongs  of  the  farmers.  As  a  remedy  for  all 
these  economic  evils,  the  socialistic  schemes  of  the  League 
were  offered,  and  found  acceptance  among  a  greater  number 
than  would  have  been  thought  possible. 

In  June,  1917,  the  Todd  County  Public  Safety  Commission 
was  organized.  The  loyalist  element  began  to  assert  itself.  A 
system  of  education  was  inaugurated  to  offset  the  propaganda 
of  the  Bolshevists.  The  better  newspapers  lent  their  aid,  and 
the  Red  Cross  and  other  war  activities  were  pushed.  Many 
public  meetings  were  held,  and  many  outside  speakers  assisted 
in  the  w^ork.  The  Public  Safety  Commission  made  itself  felt 
bj  many  arrests.  Some  were  fined  for  seditious  utterances, 
and  some  were  held  to  the  Grand  Jury.     Conditions  in  the 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  77 

county  were  such  that,  while  indictments  were  preferred  by 
the  Grand  Jury  in  the  state  courts,  it  was  impossible  in  some 
flagrant  cases  to  secure  a  conviction  by  the  petit  jury.  Such 
relief  as  was  secured  was  through  the  state  courts.  So  far  as 
this  county  was  concerned,  the  federal  courts  were  useless. 

Just  how  far  the  war  is  going  to  affect  American  politics 
in  the  future  is  something  that  many  a  politician  in 
America  would  be  exceedingly  glad  to  knoAv.  It  may  be 
that  there  will  be  some  public  men,  unworthy  to  be  called 
representatives  of  the  American  people,  w^ho  will  cater  now, 
as  before  the  w^ar,  to  the  German  vote.  We  should  beware 
of  such  men,  for  all  they  can  do  will  be  to  advocate  that 
very  propaganda  which  to-day  is  matter  of  execration  all 
over  the  country. 

There  have  not  lacked  men,  w^ho,  more  especially  before 
we  declared  war,  have  boasted  of  their  German  birth  and 
openly  made  that  their  main  argument  for  office.  In  a 
large  Ohio  city  such  a  man  ran  for  the  mayoralty  and 
polled  a  very  considerable  vote.  He  said  many  times  pub- 
licly that  he  would  not  subscribe  to  any  Liberty  Loans  and 
was  not  in  accord  with  our  govervnment.  He  was  very 
bitter  in  his  denunciation  of  all  who  did  not  side  with  him. 
He  proclaimed  himself  a  hyphenated  German  proud  of  his 
native  origin.  He  spoke  before  the  German  Sangerbund  of 
his  city  and  before  delegates  of  the  German-American  Alli- 
ance— and  he  spoke  in  German — a  democratic  candidate 
for  mayor  in  an  American  city  of  the  second  class!  He 
uttered  that  old  and  familiar  and  useless  plea — dangerous 
in  America  to-day— ''One  can't  forget  the  blood  that  flows 
in  one's  veins."  Part  of  his  campaign  argument  was  this: 
*'I  personally  hope  that  the  war  in  Europe  will  be  a  draw; 
but  if  there  must  be  a  victory,  if  I  must  choose  between 
intelligent  Germany  and  ignorant  Russia,  there  is  but  one 
place  for  me  to  cast  my  lot,  and  that  is  with  the  Kaiser. 
If  I  felt  otherwise,  I  would  not  be  human."  What  he 
should  have  said  was,  if  he  had  felt  otherwise,  he  w^ould 
not  have  been  German.  He  concluded  his  remarks  with 
the  statement  that  if  he  became  mayor,  **  Whatever  inter- 
ference there  has  been  in  the  past  with  such  an  organization 
as  I  am  now  addressing,  there  will  be  no  such  interference 


78  THE  WEB 

when  I  become  mayor/'    But  he  did  not  become  mayor. 

It  is  only  of  late  that  we  have  heard  much  of  the  Non- 
partisan League  in  America,  even  in  this  day  of  leagues, 
societies  and  alliances,  but  it  has  had  growth  and  political 
significance  in  certain  of  the  NorthAvestern  States.  It 
would  not  be  true  to  charge  the  Non-Partisan  League  with 
disloyalty  as  a  body,  but  certainly  it  would  be  yet  more 
foolish  to  say  that  all  its  members,  in  the  North-European 
part  of  the  United  States,  had  been  loyal  to  America  in 
this  war,  or  free  of  sympathy  with  Germany.  Read  the 
A.  P.  L.  reports — they  are  not  all  shown  in  these  pages — 
of  its  manifold  activities  in  sections  where  the  Non-Par- 
tisan  League  is  strongest.  Draw  your  own  inferences 
then,  for  then  you  will  have  certain  premises  and  need  not 
jump  at  any  conclusion  not  based  on  premises. 

We  may  take  its  reports  from  Dakota  and  Iowa  as  fairly 
good  proof  of  the  accuracy  of  the  foregoing  statements. 
Let  us,  for  instance,  examine  as  a  concrete  proposition  the 
report  from  Mason  City,  Iowa.  It  is  done  simply;  yet  it 
leads  us  directly  into  the  heart  of  the  problem  of  America's 
future  and  face  to  face  with  the  basic  questions  of  courage 
in  business  and  social  life  which  must  underlie  the  future 
growth  of  our  country.  A  story?  It  is  all  the  story  of 
America. 

This  report,  quite  normal  in  all  ways,  would  represent 
the  usual  type  of  report  from  a  nice,  average  agricultural 
city,  were  it  not  for  certain  phases  of  the  work  it  repre- 
sents. There  were  24  alien  enemy  cases;  97  disloyalty 
and  sedition  cases;  21  cases  of  propaganda,  and  eleven 
I.  W.  W.  cases  and  other  forms  of  radicalism.  The  state  of 
society  reflected  by  these  figures  is  best  covered  in  the  words 
of  the  report  itself : 

In  ante-bellum  times  there  existed  a  more  or  less  "well- 
grounded  opinion  that  in  this  vast  western  farming  region  the 
melting  pot  had  most  nearly  accomplished  its  task  and  that 
here,  if  anywhere,  was  a  truly  American  community.  The 
citizen  might  be  of  English,  Irish,  Scotch,  Scandinavian,  Ger- 
man or  French  birth  or  ancestry,  but  he  was  primarily  an 
American.  This  belief  was  based  upon  the  fact  that  here  all 
American  institutions  and  customs  received  hearty  support, 
that  the  pepole  encouraged  to  the  limit  the  American  liberty 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  79 

of  thought  and  action.  American  politics  in  our  region  was 
relatively  free  from  the  corruption  encouraged  by  a  large  per- 
centage of  ignorant  or  apathetic  voters.  In  fact,  the  popula- 
tion of  this  region  is  enlightened,  temperate,  and  prosperous 
—  a  condition  most  favorable  if  not  essential  to  the  proper 
and  full  development  of  a  real  Americanism. 

What  did  the  war  bring  out?  Previous  to  the  advent  of 
America  into  the  war  there  was,  on  the  whole,  a  true  neu- 
trality. There  were  sympathizers  and  partisans  of  both  sides 
and  there  was  an  even  greater  class  of  interested  spectators 
who  marveled  at  the  stupendous  feats  of  the  armies  of  both 
sides.  The  American  declaration  of  war  was  gladly  acclaimed 
by  the  pro-Allies,  cheerfully  accepted  as  a  call  to  duty  by  the 
great  mass  of  interested  spectators.  It  immediately  engaged 
the  support  of  the  majority  of  those  previously  pro-German, 
leaving  a  very  small  minority  of  pro-Germans  to  carry  on  the 
propaganda  against  the  American  and  Allied  cause. 

It  was  to  deal  with  this  small  minority  that  we  organized 
in  May,  1917,  and  began  to  select  and  swear  in  A.  P.  L. 
operatives. 

Among  matters  which  called  for  constant  vigilance,  the  Non- 
partisan League  came  in  for  a  share  of  our  attention.  At  the 
time  of  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war,  Iowa  was 
being  covered  with  literature  for  and  against  this  movement, 
the  leading  force  against  the  Non-Partisan  League  being  the 
Greater  Iowa  Association.  The  State  Council  for  National 
Defense  considered  that  it  was  not  for  the  good  of  Iowa  for 
this  fight  to  continue,  and  passed  resolutions  asking  both 
factions  to  discontinue  their  efforts  until  after  the  war.  The 
Greater  Iowa  Association  readily  acceded  to  the  request,  but 
the  Non-Partisan  League  persisted  in  its  propaganda,  and  the 
Council  for  Defense  deemed  it  wise  to  take  a  hand  in  fairness 
to  the  Greater  Iowa  Association. 

But  the  foregoing  mild  report  does  not  tell  the  full  story 
in  all  of  its  acrimonious  vehemence.  A  local  agricultural 
journal  came  out  in  red  head-lines  across  its  cover  page, 
''Iowa's  Reign  of  Terror!"  The  editor,  in  that  and  subse- 
quent issues,  printed  perhaps  50,000  words  of  condemna- 
tion of  those  not  included  among  his  own  constituents,  side- 
tracking alfalfa  and  Holsteins  wholly  for  the  time.  He 
says: 

To-day  in  Iowa  there  is  a  veritable  reign  of  terror,  which 
has  been  encouraged  among  Ignorant  and  irresponsible  people, 


80  THE  WEB 

by  men  and  organizations  who  should  and  do  know  better,  but 
who  are  playing  upon  passion  and  prejudice  for  ulterior  pur- 
poses. More  harm  is  resulting  from  this  assumption  of  author- 
ity by  private  individuals,  without  the  shadow  of  moral  or 
legal  right,  than  by  all  the  pro-German  propaganda  or  real 
disloyalty  in  the  state.  And  the  worst  of  it  is  that  it  defeats 
the  very  purpose  which  is  used  to  excuse  it  —  the  purpose  of 
uniting  all  our  citizens  whole-heartedly  and  sincerely  behind 
the  Grovernm^it's  war  aims.  Already  this  rule  of  passion, 
freed  from  legal  restraint,  has  resulted  In  the  excess  of  mob 
violence,  of  injustice  and  wrongs  towards  loyal  and  patriotic 
citizens,  whose  whole  lives  will  be  embittered  by  the  brutal 
intolerance  of  a  few.  Our  boasted  freedom  and  liberty  and 
love  of  fair  play  are  being  made  the  victims  of  methods  no 
better  than  those  of  the  despoilers  of  Belgium,  from  which 
they  differ  not  in  quality  but  only  in  degree. 

Right  to-day  in  Iowa,  men  in  positions  of  leadership  and 
responsibility  are  fomenting  and  encouraging  this  spirit  of 
mob  rule  and  terrorism,  which  is  wholly  outside  the  pale  of 
law,  and  which  will  result  in  such  a  spirit  of  lawlessness  that 
we  will  all  pay  dearly  for  it  in  the  years  to  come.  The  Greater 
Iowa  Association  and  its  allied  organizations  are  among  those 
which  are  helpinc:  to  create  this  atmosphere  of  dangerous  sus- 
picion and  distrust,  especially  towards  farmers'  organizations 
in  Iowa,  which  is  bound  to  result  in  bloodshed  and  lynch-law 
if  it  is  not  quickly  checked.  The  Greater  Iowa  Association 
boasts  in  its  monthly  publication  that  it  has  already  spent 
$20,000  in  helping  to  put  down  the  Bolsheviki  of  Iowa  (its 
usual  expression  for  the  loyal  and  conservative  farmers  of  this 
state)  and  that  it  will  spend  $180,000  more  (a  total  of  $200,000) 
for  this  purpose  if  necessary.  Its  sentiments  are  approved 
and  applauded  by  its  sycophant  organizations,  such  as  the  Des 
Moines  Chamber  of  Commerce,  in  its  official  monthly  bulletin, 
which  it  proclaims  is  "the  mouthpiece  for  Des  Moines." 

Tut,  tut!  Obviously,  Mason  City  leads  directly  into  a 
pretty  political  mess.  Willy-nilly,  friends  of  the  A.  P.  L., 
if  not  members  of  the  Non-Partisan  League,  are  pushed 
into  ranks  assigned  to  enemies.  We  may  mildly  animad- 
vert on  the  fact  that  it  is  the  members  of  the  Non-Partisan 
League  who  largely  buy  the  journal  from  which  the  fore- 
going quotation  is  made.  It  has  had  a  long  and  honorable 
history,  but  is  perhaps  not  so  disinterested  as  the  A.  P.  L. 
It  does  not,  however,  go  to  war  with  the  A.  P.  L.  so  much 
as  with  the   Greater  Iowa  Association,  which  presently 


GERMAN  PROPAGANDA  gl 

voted  the  editor  out  of  membership.  The  American  Pro- 
tective League  might  have  been  drawn  into  politics  if  it  had 
lived  much  longer — perforce  would  be  and  ought  to  be 
drawn.  One  thing  is  sure,  if  a  man  must  cater  in  business 
to  a  class  which  has  disloyalty  inborn  and  ingrained,  that 
man  is  not  catering  to  America  and  a  great  future  for  her. 

It  is  all  a  question  of  the  high  heart  of  the  gentleman 
unafraid— individual  courage,  clear-headedness,  honest 
self-searching.  That  is  as  true  for  the  native  born  as  for 
the  naturalized  citizen.  Perhaps  for  all  these  w^arring 
lowans,  some  of  whom  were  zealous  and  interested,  there 
might  very  well,  in  these  grave,  troubled  days  of  our 
country  and  of  all  the  world,  be  put  on  the  w^all  of  our 
house  the  old  Bible  motto:  ''Blessed  are  the  pure  in 
heart." 

You  ask,  indeed,  what  shall  we  do  with  all  these  chame- 
leon propagandists,  these  foreigners?  How  shall  we  clas- 
sify them  —  as  Americans  or  as  enemies?  Who  is  the 
American? 

It  is  simple  to  answer  that.  It  is  he  who  himself  knows 
in  his  own  soul  w^hether  or  not  he  is  done  with  the  damn- 
able hyphen  which  has  almost  ruined  America,  and  yet 
may  do  so.  Liberty  Bonds  and  public  speaking  do  not 
prove  Americanism.  Not  even  service  stars  in  a  window 
make  a  man  American.  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  of 
Mason  City  or  of  Des  Moines,  of  the  Greater  Iowa  Associa- 
tion or  the  Non-Partisan  League,  of  the  Peoples'  Council, 
of  the  A.  P.  L.,  or  of  German  or  American  birth.  And 
when  individual  American  courage  is  common  enough  to 
make  a  man  fight  pro-Germanism  until  it  is  dead  forever, 
one  thinks  we  shall  indeed  see  God  manifested  again  in 
the  great  civilization  which  once  w^as  promised  for  America. 
It  can  be  had  now  in  only  one  way,  and  that  way  will  cost 
dear.  If  you  are  interested  in  your  son's  future,  see  to  it 
that  he — and  you  yourself — shall  be  pure  in  heart.  We 
want  and  will  have  no  others  for  Americans  to-day  or  to- 
morrow. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES 

The  Great  Spy  Cases  —  Details  of  German  Propaganda  — 
Finances  and  Personnel  of  German  Forces  in  America 
—  The  Diplomatic  Fiasco  —  Notorious  Figures  of  Alien 
Espionage  Uncovered  —  The  Senate  Judicial  Investigation. 

To  gain  any  adequate  idea  of  the  amount  of  the  activi- 
ties which  centered  in  New  York  would  mean  the  following 
out  of  countless  concealed  threads  leading  all  over  the 
world  and  covering  the  United  States  like  a  net.  We  never 
knew  until  we  were  well  into  this  war  that,  long  before 
we  dreamed  of  war,  our  country  was  infested  by  vast 
numbers  of  the  paid  spies  of  Germany ;  that  these  worked 
under  a  well-established,  andj  now  well-known,  organiza- 
tion; that  the  highest  German  diplomatic  representatives 
were  a  part  of  the  system ;  that  leading  financial  figures  of 
New  York  were  figures  in  it  also,  and  that  the  whole  intri- 
cate machine  was  differentiated  like  a  great  and  well- 
ordered  business  undertaking.  It  was  an  elaborate  organi- 
zation for  the  betrayal  of  a  country;  and  that  organiza- 
tion, like  the  armed  forces  of  Germany  in  the  field,  was 
beaten  and  broken  only  by  the  loyal  men  of  America,  re- 
solved once  more  that  a  government  of  the  people  should 
not  perish  from  the  earth. 

Let  the  scene  shift  from  New  York — whose  defensive 
organization  has  been  outlined — to  the  national  judicial 
center  at  Washington,  the  seat  of  our  intelligence  system 
and  of  those  courts  of  law  which  have  in  charge  the 
national  affairs.  There,  for  many  months,  a  few  men  have 
sat  and  watched  pour  into  their  offices  such  proofs  of 
human  perfidy  and  depravity  as  can  never  have  been  paral- 
leled in  the  most  Machiavellian  days  of  the  Dark  Ages. 

The  daily  press  of  the  United  States  acted  under  a  volun- 
tary censorship  during  the  war,  even  while  it  saw  pass 

82 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  83 

by  such  news  as  never  before  had  it  seen  in  America.    Now 

and  again  something  of  this  would  break  which  obviously 
was  public  property  and  ought  to  be  known — the  notorious 
transactions  of  von  Bemstorff,  von  Papen,  Dr.  Albert,  Boy- 
Ed,  Bolo;  such  crimes  as  the  blowing  up  of  the  inter- 
national bridge  in  Maine;  the  mysterious  fires  and  explo- 
sions whose  regularity  attracted  attention;  the  diplomatic 
revelations  regarding  Dumba  and  Dernburg  and  their  col- 
leagues, which  finally  resulted  in  the  dismissal  of  the 
clique  of  high  German  officials  whose  creed  had  been  one 
of  diplomatic  and  personal  dishonor. 

The  stories  of  German  attempts  to  control  several  New 
York  newspapers;  their  efforts  to  buy  or  subsidize  some 
thirty  other  journals  in  all  parts  of  the  country ;  the  well- 
known  subsidizing  of  certain  writers  to  spread  propaganda 
in  the  press— all  these  things  also  necessarily  got  abroad 
to  such  an  extent  that  the  United  States  Government  could 
not  fail  to  take  cognizance  of  it.  At  length,  charges  came 
out  linking  up  a  Washington  daily  with  wealthy  commer- 
cial interests  of  a  supposedly  pro-German  nature,  and  a 
great  deal  of  acrimonious  comment  appeared  in  all  parts 
of  the  country.  Washington  resolved  to  investigate  these 
charges.  The  process  took  the  form,  in  the  late  fall  of 
1918,  of  the  appointment  of  a  sub-committee  of  the  great 
Senate  Judiciary  Committee,  which  popularly  was  known 
as  the  Overman  Committee. 

The  work  of  this  committee,  which  summoned  before  it 
officers  of  the  Attorney  General's  establishment  in  New 
York,  agents  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  in  Washing- 
ton, of  Military  and  Naval  Intelligence  in  Washington,  and 
all  the  larger  figures  of  the  accused  or  suspected  persons 
implicated  in  what  now  had  become  a  wide-reaching 
national  scandal,  was  continued  over  many  weeks.  The 
proceedings  were  made  public  regularly,  and  at  last  the 
readers  of  America  began  to  get,  at  first  hand,  authentic 
ideas  of  what  menace  had  been  at  our  doors  and  inside 
our  doors.  It  was  before  this  Overman  Committee  that  many 
of  the  great  New  York  cases  in  which  A.  P.  L.  assisted 
passed  to  their  final  review. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  single  witness  called  before 
this  Senate  committee  was  Mr.  A.  Bruce  Bielaski,  Chief 


84  THE  WEB 

of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  of  the  Department  of  Jus- 
tice at  Washington.  Mr.  Bielaski  was  on  the  stand  for  days 
at  a  time,  and  his  testimony  came  as  a  distinct  shock  to 
those  of  us  who  heretofore  had  known  little  or  nothing 
about  the  way  in  which  our  covert  forces  of  espionage 
were  combating  those  of  Germany.  It  will  not  be  needful 
to  follow  the  records  of  the  committee  from  day  to  day 
throughout  the  long  period  of  its  sittings,  but  some  of  the 
more  important  revelations  made  by  Mr.  Bielaski  first  may 
be  brought  to  notice. 

It  was  brought  into  the  record,  for  publication  later  by 
the  State  Department,  that  there  was  a  regular  system  of 
secret  messages  between  Count  von  Bernstorff  of  the  Im- 
perial German  Embassy  at  Washington,  and  the  Berlin 
Foreign  Office,  by  way  of  South  America  and  Stockholm. 
All  this  time  the  Imperial  German  Ambassador  was  posing 
as  a  great  friend  of  America,  while  in  reality  he  was  the 
chief  of  the  German  spy  system  in  America — an  example 
of  all  that  a  nobleman  should  not  be. 

It  was  shown  by  Mr.  Bielaski  that  the  German  consul  in 
Chicago,  Reiswitz,  suggested  as  long  ago  as  1915  that  Ger- 
man interests  ought  to  buy  the  Wright  aeroplane  fac- 
tories in  Dayton,  Ohio,  in  an  attempt  to  stop  the  shipment 
of  aeroplanes  to  the  Allies.  Something  stopped  the  ship- 
ment— let  us  suppose  that  it  was  not  the  efficiency  of  Ger- 
biany  so  much  as  our  own  inefficiency,  deplorable  as  that 
admission  must  be. 

Nothing  came  of  this  attempt,  nor  of  the  attempt  to 
control  the  Bridgeport  Projectile  Works,  in  any  very  con- 
clusive and  satisfactory  fashion  for  Germany.  A  year 
later  von  Bernstorff  begins  to  complain  that  German  propa- 
ganda has  not  been  producing  much  result.  He  cuts  free 
from  the  German  publication,  ''Fair  Play,"  and  declares 
that  he  w^ould  be  glad  to  be  well  quit  of  George  Sylvester 
Viereck's  ''Fatherland."  He  asks  his  imperial  government 
to  give  him  $50,000  more,  with  which  he  would  like  to 
start  a  monthly  magazine  in  the  United  States.  This  was 
the  beginning  of  those  general  revelations  which  exposed 
alike  the  clumsiness  of  German  diplomacy,  and  the 
endeavor  of  German  espionage  as  against  our  own. 

Reiswitz  was  declared  by  Mr.  Bielaski  to  have  advised 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  85 

the  continuance  of  the  ''American  Embargo  Conference," 
which  was  set  on  foot  to  create  opposition  to  our  shipment 
of  munitions  to  the  Allies.  He  signified  that  this  ought  to 
be  used  as  an  influence  to  swing  German  voters  in  presi- 
dential elections.  Mr.  Bielaski  brought  into  the  record  the 
''Citizens'  Committee  for  Food.  Shipments,"  which  was 
supported  by  Dr.  Edmund  von  Mach  of  Cambridge.  It  had 
been  organized  in  the  home  of  a  prominent  New  York 
citizen. 

There  was  brought  in  the  record  also  the  name  of  a 
newspaper  correspondent — more  is  the  pity  for  that — who 
had  letters  from  Count  von  Bernstorff  and  Captain  von 
Papen,  military  attache,  declaring  that  this  man  was  in 
the  service  of  Germany  and  Austria.  The  sj^idicate  em- 
ploying this  man,  as  is  well  known,  cancelled  his  contract 
as  soon  as  his  real  character  and  his  pro-German  attitude 
were  revealed. 

The  record  also  declared  that  a  former  correspondent  of 
the  Cologne  Gazette  in  Washington,  notified  by  the  State 
Department  to  leave  this  country,  had  been  in  close  wire- 
less communication  with  a  German  paper  in  Rotterdam. 
All  of  these  revelations  began  to  implicate  certain 
Americans  prominent  in  business  and  in  politics,  so  that 
at  once  the  transaction  by  the  Senate  Committee  became 
the  biggest  news  of  the  time,  one  recrimination  following 
another  and  one  explanation  another  in  rapid  sequence. 
The  Committee,  none  the  less,  ground  on,  and  produced 
original  papers  which  proved  German  methods  beyond  a 
doubt.  Two  code  dispatches  from  von  Bernstorff  to  the 
Berlin  Foreign  Office  were  put  into  the  evidence,  one  of 
which  was  dated  November  1,  1916,  and  stated:  "Since 
the  Lusitania  case,  we  have  strictly  confined  ourselves  to 
such  propaganda  as  cannot  hurt  us  if  it  becomes  known'.. 
The  sole  exception  is  perhaps  the  peace  propaganda,  which 
has  cost  the  least  amount,  but  which  also  has  been  the 
most  successful." 

Again  von  Bemstorff  states  that  it  would  not  seem  de- 
sirable for  him  to  be  held  responsible  for  any  articles  in 
the  subsidized  newspaper,  "when,  as  now,  we  are  in  a 
campaign  of  the  bitterest  character  which  is  turning 
largely  upon  foreign  policy." 


86  THE  WEB 

Mr.  Reiswitz  of  Chicago  was  on  hand  with  estimates  for 
his  excellent  master  at  all  times.  In  regard  to  the  Em- 
bargo Conference,  he  wrote  in  the  first  year  of  the  war: 
**It  would  require  an  estimated  amount  of  $6,000  or  $7,000. 
The  contemplated  continuation  of  the  enterprise  would,  in 
accordance  with  my  opinion,  be  favorable  to  the  entire 
German  vote,  and  would  facilitate  influencing  German 
voters."  So  we  have  at  once  the  first  indication  of  the 
truth  that  the  great  German  population  of  America  is  to 
be  handled  for  the  particular  purpose  of  advancing  Ger- 
many's interests,  not  only  in  America  but  all  over  the 
world. 

Mr.  Bielaski  read  into  the  record  documents  alleging 
that  the  American  Press  Association  was  contemplated  as 
desirable  for  German  control.  A  memorandum  by  Dr.  Al- 
bert, financial  expert,  stated  that  he  would  obtain  a  thirty 
day  option  on  the  American  Press  Association  for  the  price 
of  $900,000,  with  an  additional  $100,000  for  news  s.ervice. 
The  memorandum  in  full  was  introduced  before  the  Com- 
mittee. 

Professor  von  Mach  was  stated  by  Mr.  Bielaski  to  have 
been  active  in  behalf  of  interned  prisoners,  largely  by  way 
of  his  press  agent,  whom  he  supplied  with  inspiration. 
Von  Mach  was  later  brought  before  the  Committee  to  ex- 
plain in  person  as  best  he  might  certain  publications  which 
he  had  put  out  in  other  form. 

Mr.  Bielaski  stated  that  German  interests  advanced  to 
the  Bridgeport  Projectile  Company  $3,400,000,  and  that 
these  interests  got  back  $1,000,000  of  this  money  by  selling 
a  large  part  of  the  company's  product  to  Spain. 

Mr.  Bielaski  mentioned  a  society  known  as  the  **  Ameri- 
can Truth  Society,"  organized  in  1910  and  reported  to 
have  been  financed  by  the  German  government,  to  what 
extent  was  undetermined.  One  record  of  a  transfer  of 
$10,000  was  shown. 

Records  which  had  been  taken  from  the  office  of  Wolf 
von  Igel  showed  that  scarcely  a  ship  sailed  for  a  neutral 
country  which  did  not  carry  a  German  agent.  There  were 
at  least  two  American  newspaper  men  who  had  been 
bought  outright  by  Germany.  Blackmail  was  not  above 
the   consideration   of   some    of  these   fellow-conspirators. 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  87 

Amounts  of  $1,000  to  $5,000  had  been  paid  to  subsidize 
one  paper  which  was  dropped  by  the  embassy.  The  owner 
then  threatened  the  embassy  that  if  he  did  not  get  any 
more  money  he  might  allow  the  paper  to  go  into  bank- 
ruptcy, and  the  ensuing  publicity  would  show  the  subsidy. 
Dr.  Albert  was  authorized  to  settle  with  this  man  to  keep 
him  quiet — he  paid  something  over  $3,000  in  this  instance. 
Continually  there  rose  a  loud  wail  from  Dr.  Albert  and  von 
Bernstorfe,'  ''Stung!" 

There  were  some  recriminations  between  journals  in 
America  as  to  the  nature  of  the  ''news"  sent  in  by  Ameri- 
can foreign  correspondents  located  in  Germany.  It  w^as 
sometimes  offered  in  explanation  of  the  pro-German  atti- 
tude of  certain  of  these  correspondents  that  it  was  natural 
that  a  man  resident  in  Germany  should  hear  one  side  only 
of  the  case.  Others,  more  especially  after  the  Senate  reve- 
lations, were  disposed  to  think  there  might  be  other  valu- 
able considerations  moving  correspondents  thereto.  Indeed, 
names  and  dates  and  prices  of  perfectly  good  correspond- 
ents are  now  on  record  with  the  Overman  Committee. 

The  Bielaski  testimony  was  strengthened  by  that  of 
Major  Humes  and  Captain  Lester  of  Military  Intelligence. 
Incidentally,  the  attempts  of  Germany  to  embroil  us  with 
Mexico  were  shoAvn.  Very  interesting  testimony  was 
brought  out  from  Carl  Heinen,  an  interned  German,  for- 
merly a  member  of  the  Embassy  staff,  and  a  former  consul 
general  at  Mexico  City.  Major  Humes  of  M.  I.  D.  put  in 
the  record  the  relations  of  Felix  A.  Somerfeld,  an  alien 
enemy  who  was  an  alleged  Villa  agent  in  New  York, 
showing  that  in  eight  months  Villa  had  received  nearly 
$400,000  worth  of  rifle  cartridges  from  Somerfeld,  who  was 
closely  associated  with  the  German  agents,  Carl  Rintelen 
and  Friedrick  Stallforth,  a  prominent  German  banker  in 
Mexico.  The  drafts  on  certain  trust  companies  were  pro- 
duced as  part  of  the  evidence. 

Heinen 's  deposition  was  subscribed  to  by  F.  A.  Borger- 
meister.  Dr.  Albert's  confidential  secretary,  before  he  was 
interned  at  Fort  Oglethorpe.  This  disclosed  the  disposition 
of  $33,770,000  that  passed  through  German  hands.  This 
money  was  obtained  in  loans  from  New  York  banks,  or 
through  the  American  agents  of  banks  in  Germany. 


38  THE  WEB 

Secretary  of  War  Baker  had  commanded  Captain  Les- 
ter of  Military  Intelligence  to  make  public  some  of  the 
secrets  of  this  division  which  heretofore  had  been  repos- 
ing in  the  silence  of  the  tomb.  Captain  Lester  testified 
to  the  confession  of  a  former  German  officer,  who  admitted 
having  been  sent  here  as  a  propagandist.  This  man  told 
the  federal  officials  that  in  June,  before  the  Archduke 
Francis  Ferdinand  of  Austria  was  assassinated,  the  Ger- 
man government  was  plotting  the  war.  Captain  Lester 
quoted  this  man  as  saying  that  in  the  middle  of  June, 
1914,  Bethmann-Holweg  sent  out  inquiries  to  various  sci- 
entists, professors  and  other  intellectual  persons  to  learn 
w^hether  they  were  ready  for  foreign  service  in  the  event 
of  war.  There  were  one  hundred  and  thirty  of  these  who 
were  told  to  be  ready  for  instant  call  to  service  in  North 
and  South  America,  Japan  and  China,  as  directors  of  pro- 
paganda. They  met  in  the  Foreign  Office  in  Berlin,  July 
10,  1914,  and  three  weeks  later  sailed  from  Copenhagen 
for  New  York  under  charge  of  Dr.  Heinrich  F.  Albert. 
In  order  not  to  arouse  suspicion,  most  of  them  traveled 
steerage. 

Captain  Lester,  after  a  long  day  of  testimony,  referred 
to  the  ''  Golden  Book  "  —  a  book  in  which  German-Amer- 
icans w^rote  their  names  after  they  had  contributed  to 
a  German  War  Belief  fund.  This  book  was  to  have  been 
presented  to  the  Kaiserin.  The  purpose  of  this  book,  in 
the  belief  of  Captain  Lester,  was  to  get  certain  prominent 
German-Americans  signed  up  as  loyal  to  the  fatherland, 
without  letting  them  know  they  were  doing  it. 

Captain  Lester,  in  later  testimony  before  the  Overman 
Committee,  said  that  of  the  one  hundred  and  thirty  trained 
and  educated  German  propagandists  sent  out  nearly  a 
month  before  the  war  started,  thirty-one  landed  in  the 
United  States  two  weeks  after  hostilities  had  started  in 
Europe.  They  became  the  starting  point  of  an  organiza- 
tion comprising  between  200,000  and  300,000  volunteers, 
in  large  part  German- Americans,  who  were  secret  spies  in 
this  country  and  who  reported  regularly  to  German  con- 
suls and  agents  in  widely  scattered  centers  of  the  German 
spy  system  in  the  United  States. 

It  may  cause  a  certain  horror  and  revulsion  in  the  hearts 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  89 

of  the  American  public  when  they  realize  that  a  quarter 
of  a  million  secret  German  agents  were  working  here  in 
America  all  the  time  against  us  —  just  about  as  many  as 
existed  of  loyal  Americans  under  the  unseen  banner  of  the 
American  Protective  League.  The  American  public  now 
can  begin  to  understand  something  of  the  bitter  battle 
which  was  fought  between  these  two  secret  organizations 
—  the  quarter  million  German  spies  who  lived  here,  and 
the  quarter  million  loyal  American  citizens  who  made  this 
their  home  and  this  their  country. 

Captain  Lester  showed  that  the  group  sent  to  America 
had  definite  instructions.  One  was  to  deal  with  commer- 
cial matters,  another  with  political,  and  a  third  leader  was 
to  take  up  the  South  American  and  Mexican  relations. 
General  headquarters  in  New  York  were  at  1123  Broad- 
way, arrangements  having  been  made  for  these  quarters 
in  advance.  The  Hamburg-American  Company,  whose 
status  toward  us  in  the  war  is  now  notorious,  took  charge 
of  the  first  work  of  the  German  Press  Bureau.  The  origi- 
nal artist  in  this  labor  was  replaced  by  a  newspaper  man, 
whose  salary  from  Germany  was  later  discovered  to  have 
been  $15,000.  A  former  major  of  the  United  States,  once 
a  newspaper  man,  was  declared  to  have  been  hired  at  $40 
a  week  to  report  to  these  German  headquarters  any  con- 
fidential interviews  he  might  have  with  Washington  offi- 
cials. 

The  Lutheran  church  propaganda  was  brought  definitely 
before  the  Overman  Committee.  Dr.  Albert  and  Dr.  Puhr 
had  this  form  of  propaganda  in  charge.  Captain  Lester 
said  that  there  are  about  six  thousand  Lutheran  congre- 
gations in  the  United  States,  with  a  membership  of  nearly 
3,000,000,  and  that  the  propaganda  was  directed  through 
pastors  who  had  been  born  in  Germany,  or  were  alien 
enemies,  or  were  of  German  parentage.  There  were  over 
one  thousand  two  hundred  individual  cases  investigated. 
Readers  of  these  pages  will  recall  a  few  instances  of  the 
work  of  the  American  Protective  League  in  looking  into 
these  many  instances  of  disloyalty.  Captain  Lester  said: 
'*  We  have  found  in  localities  that  the  word  had  gone 
down  the  line  to  groups  of  clergymen  that  they  were  to 
preach  sermons  in  favor  of  Germany,  and  that  this  had 


90  THE  WEB 

been  done.  I  investigated  a  ease  in  New  York  where  the 
clergyman  admitted  to  me  he  had  received  instructions 
to  preach  such  a  sermon.  From  August,  1914,  to  April, 
1917,  in  hundreds  of  Lutheran  churches,  the  continuous 
preaching  was  in  favor  and  hope  of  German  victory." 

It  transpired  that  British  Military  Intelligence  had  in 
possession  a  great  mass  of  documents  taken  by  General 
Allenby  in  the  capture  of  Nazareth.  These  were  found 
among  the  effects  of  that  Major  Franz  von  Papen  who  once 
had  been  military  attache  in  Washington,  and  whose  name 
has  become  more  or  less  familiar  through  some  of  the  dis- 
closures regarding  von  Bernstorff  and  his  activities. 

These  papers,  added  to  those  taken  by  our  own  Intelli- 
gence officers  from  prominent  Germans  this  side  the  water, 
go  to  build  up  the  tremendous  and  tragic  story  of  a 
nation's  shame.  Germany  had  a  widely  spread  and  elabo- 
rate plan  to  ruin  this  country.  She  failed.  The  proofs 
of  her  failure  are  now  before  the  public,  and  they  run  very 
wide.  They  do  not  leave  us  feeling  any  too  comfortable 
or  any  too  sure  regarding  our  own  country.  It  is  not 
pleasant  to  have  listed,  as  part  with  the  German  records, 
those  of  our  great  newspapers  which,  in  the  German  belief, 
might  be  classed  as  "  neutral  or  favorable  to  Germany.'* 
It  is  not  pleasant  to  see  the  names  of  newspaper  men  once 
held  honorable  and  loyal,  but  now  condemned  to  have  had 
the  itching  palm  and  to  have  received  German  gold.  There 
is  nothing  pleasant  about  the  whole  sordid,  abominable 
story,  nothing  clean,  nothing  satisfying,  nothing  honor- 
able. But  it  shows  that  when  we  had  this  sort  of  work 
to  do,  we  did  it  thoroughly  and  accomplished  the  mission 
on  which  our  men  were  sent  out. 

Some  of  the  most  sensational  testimony  was  that  brought 
out  by  Alfred  L.  Becker,  Deputy  Attorney  General  of  New 
York,  who  had  in  charge  a  great  many  of  the  big  espionage 
and  treason  investigation^  in  that  city,  which  was  the 
American  home  and  headquarters  of  the  German  spy  army. 

Mr.  Becker  told  of  his  own  investigations,  at  the  instance 
of  the  French  Government,  in  the  case  of  Bolo  Pacha. 
The  latter  was  executed  as  a  French  traitor,  but  Avas  shown 
to  have  gotten  Germany  money  in  this  country  to  the 
extent  of  $1,683,000.     As  is  well  known,  Bolo  had  raised 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  91 

this  money  to  purchase  the  Paris  Journal.  This  paper, 
however,  did  not  change  its  loyalty  to  France,  so  there 
was  a  loud  wail  on  the  part  of  Germany's  headj  spies  that 
they  had  been  swindled  once  more. 

Mr.  Becker  produced  many  British  secret  service  docu- 
ments showing  the  elaborate  governmental  arrangements 
in  Berlin  to  establish  and  maintain  spy  systems,  both  before 
and  after  the  war.  These  documents  listed,  as  agents, 
journalists,  college  professors,  bankers,  business  men,  con- 
sular attaches,  and  others  of  all  ranks.  Mr.  Becker  showed 
that  a  former  German  reservist,  later  an  auditor  of  accounts 
in  New  York  City,  was  told  as  early  as  1909  that  he  would 
be  valuable  in  case  of  war  as  a  German  propagandist  in 
the  United  States.  It  was  intended  to  get  a  good  system 
of  distribution  of  German  *'  kultur  "  established  in  Amer- 
ica. Then  there  could  at  once  be  put  before  American 
readers  such  stories  as  that  systematic  attempt  made  in 
1917  to  advance  the  idea  that  Germany  was  on  the  verge 
of  revolt  and  that  the  Kaiser  soon  would  be  overthro^^Ti. 
The  German  censor  was  back  of  the  dissemination  of  these 
reports,  it  being  maintained  to  paralyze  the  prosecution 
of  the  war  in  this  country,  where  we  had  the  pleasant 
theory  that  the  German  Kaiser  and  the  German  people 
were  not  at  one  as  to  the  war. 

Mr.  Becker  also  went  into  many  transactions  of  Ambas- 
sador von  Bernstorff,  showing  him  to  have  been  quite 
willing  to  buy  the  Paris  Journal  with  German  money  if 
need  be.  He  placed  in  the  record  correspondence  which 
showed  that  when  Dr.  Dernburg  left  Germany  for  the 
United  States  in  August,  1914,  the  German  government 
deposited  25,000,000  marks  with  M.  M.  Warburg  &  Com- 
pany of  Hamburg,  which  Mr.  Becker  stated  was  for  pro- 
paganda purposes  in  the  United  States.  Dr.  Dernburg 
brought  to  this  country  a  power  of  attorney  from  the 
Imperial  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  which  gave  him  the 
distribution  of  the  fund.  Of  this  fund,  $400,000  was  turned 
over  to  Dr.  Albert,  head  of  German  finances  in  New  York, 
by  Dr.  Dernburg. 

Mr.  Becker  gave  a  long  list  of  banks  which  had  partici- 
pated in  the  sale  of  German  bonds  in  this  country,  these 
banks  being  located  in  the  principal  cities  of  the  east  and 


92  THE  WEB 

west.  He  named  as  well  the  chain  of  banks  in  which  the 
German  government  opened  accounts  for  certain  purposes. 
He  showed  the  credentials  brought  from  the  German  chan- 
cellor by  Dr.  Dernburg  to  large  financial  institutions  in 
New  York,  which  were  made  repositories  of  German  funds. 
The  letter  to  one  such  banking  firm  in  New  York,  from 
Warburg  &  Company  of  Hamburg,  establishing  the  Ger- 
man credit  of  25,000,000  marks,  was  made  a  part  of  the 
record,  also  the  power  of  attorney  enclosed  by  Dr.  Dern- 
burg to  the  New  York  repository. 

Mr.  Becker  mentioned  the  underwriting  of  German 
bonds  by  a  New  York  concern  to  a  total  amount  of  $9,908,- 
000.  The  proceeds  were  deposited  with  a  trust  company 
in  New  York  to  the  order  of  the  Imperial  German  Govern- 
ment, and  were  checked^  out  by  von  Bernstorff  and  Albert 
for  deposit  in  the  chain  of  banks  above  referred  to.  It 
was  the  intention  to  make  these  banking  institutions  favor- 
able to  the  German  ideas,  and  unfavorable  to  the  American 
bond  sales.  An  initial  deposit  was  made  with  the  Equita- 
ble Trust  Company  of  $3,350,000;  the  Columbia  Trust 
Company  had  an  initial  deposit  of  $750,000;  the  Chase 
National  Bank  was  alleged  to  have  had  an  initial  deposit 
of  $125,000.  As  the  proceeds  of  the  German  war  loan 
notes  accumulated,  the  deposits  in  certain  of  these  New 
York  financial  institutions  were  increased.  In  order  to 
avoid  any  legal  complications,  the  German  government 
openedj  a  blind  account  so  that  Dr.  Albert  could  go  on 
with  his  operations  without  any  fear  of  detection  by  any- 
one desiring  to  bring  legal  action  against  him.  These 
figures  will  give  the  reader  some  idea  of  the  extent  of 
the  German  finances.  All  this  money  —  and  many  times  tJie 
amounts  above  mentioned  —  ivas  spent  for  tlie  one  and  only 
purpose  of  German  propaganda  and  spy  work  in  tJie  United 
States. 

Major  Humes  took  Dr.  E-dmund  von  Mach  over  the 
jumps  in  his  cross-examination  before  the  Overman  Com- 
mittee. Von  Mach  came  in  for  a  gruelling  by  Senator 
Nelson  and  others  of  the  Committee  when  he  attempted 
to  speak  in  justification  of  German  practices  in  war.  He 
did  his  best  to  carry  water  on  both  shoulders,  but  had  a 
very  unhappy  quarter  of  an  hour.     He  was  followed  and 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  93 

preceded  on  the  stand  by  certain  literary  gentlemen,  col- 
lege professors  and  others,  who  undertook  to  explain  to 
the  Committee  utterances  they  had  made  in  print  or  else- 
where which  were  charged  to  show  disloyalty  to  the  inter- 
ests of  the  United  States.  It  is  impossible  to  give  in  any 
sort  of  detail  the  vast  extension  of  the  testimony  before 
this  Committee,  or  to  mention  the  many  widely  extended 
forms  of  the  German  activities  that  ran  in  this  country 
during  the  war.  Perhaps  we  may  summarize  the  German 
attitude,  as  well  as  in  any  other  way,  by  citing  the  opinion 
of  that  delectable  gentleman,  the  Count  von  Bernstorff, 
ambassador  of  the  Imperial  German  Government  at  Wash- 
ington, in  his  communication  to  the  Foreign  Office  in  Ber- 
lin, in  explanation  of  his  activities  in  the  United  States: 

It  is  particularly  difficult  in  a  hostile  country  to  find  suit- 
able persons  for  help  of  this  sort,  and  to  this  fact,  as  well  as 
the  Lusitania  case,  we  may  attribute  the  shipwreck  of  the 
German  propaganda  initiated  by  Herr  Dernburg.  Now  that 
opinion  is  somewhat  improved  in  our  favor,  and  that  we  are 
no  longer  ostracized,  we  can  take  the  work  up  again.  As  I 
have  said  before,  our  success  depends  entirely  upon  finding 
the  suitable  people.  We  can  then  leave  to  them  whether  they 
will  start  a  daily,  weekly,  or  a  monthly,  and  the  sort  of  sup- 
port to  be  given.  In  my  opinion,  we  should  always  observe 
the  principle  that  either  a  representative  of  ours  should  buy 
the  paper,  or  that  the  proprietor  should  be  secured  by  us  by 
continuous  support.     The  latter  course  has  been  followed  by 

the  English  in  respect  of  the  New  York  ,  and  our 

enemies  have  spent  here  large  sums  in  this  manner.  All  the 
same,  I  do  not  think  that  they  pay  regular  subsidies.  At 
least,  I  never  heard  of  such.  This  form  of  payment  is  more- 
over inadvisable,  because  one  can  never  get  free  of  the 
recipients.  They  all  wish  to  become  permanent  pensioners  of 
the  Empire,  and  if  they  fail  in  that,  they  try  to  blackmail  us. 

I,  therefore,  request  your  Excellency  to  sanction  the  pay- 
ment in  question. 

By  way  of  general  summary,  it  may  be  said"  that  a  well- 
defined  organization  long  existed  in  our  country,  districted 
with  the  usual  German  exactness.  German  Naval  Intelli- 
gence had  charge  of  destruction  of  our  shipping,  naval 
sabotage,  etc.    Boy-Ed,  naval  attache  at  Washington,  was 


94  THE  WEB 

to  have  handled  this.  The  notorious  Rintelen,  who  seemed 
to  have  operated  independently  in  New  York,  confined  his 
activities  rather  to  the  making  of  bombs  to  be  concealed 
on  ships,  to  the  incitement  of  strikes,  munition  embargoes, 
etc.  Dr.  Scheele,  one  of  the  three  most  prominent  spies 
in  America,  was  relied  on  to  devise  means  of  burning 
ships  at  sea.  His  method  of  bomb  manufacture  is  spoken 
of  later. 

What  is  equivalent  to  our  Military  Intelligence  Depart- 
ment in  Germany,  in  turn  took  up  the  question  of  sabotage 
in  our  ammunition  works,  and  of  getting  contraband  stuff 
into  Germany.  Scheele,  who  was  taken  in  custody  by  the 
United  States,  declared  that  this  country  was  divided  into 
military  districts,  and  that  supplies  of  arms  and  ammu- 
nition were  gotten  together.  He  even  declared  at  one  time 
that  he  knew  of  200,000  Mauser  rifles  stored  in  a  German 
club  in  New  York  City.  He  was  taken  there  by  Govern- 
ment officials  and  located  the  place  where  the  rifles  prob- 
ably had  been  stored,  although  they  hadj  in  the  meantime 
been  removed. 

Von  Papen,  military  attache  at  "Washington,  had  much 
the  same  work  for  the  army  that  Boy-Ed  had  taken  on 
for  the  navy.  He  often  appears  in  the  revelations  of  the 
German  spy  system,  as  in  the  plot  against  the  Welland 
Canal,  and  the  Vanceboro  bridge,  for  which  Werner  Horn 
was  arrested.  Von  Papen  had  the  charge  of  the  Bridge- 
port Projectile  Company,  which  was  intended  to  disor- 
ganize our  manufacture  of  munitions.  He  had  some  sort 
of  charge  of  Scheele,  the  German  chemist  spy,  who  is,  per- 
haps, the  best  known  example  now  remaining  on  American 
soil  of  the  German  espionage  system. 

Special  commissions  to  spread  disease  germs  were  sent 
to  this  country,  as  perhaps  A.  P.  L.  reading  will  have  indi- 
cated. A  good  deal  of  this  work  failed  because  so  many 
of  the  German  spies  were  interned  early  in  the  war,  and 
there  has  been  no  good  opportunity  since  to  replace  these 
men  properly,  the  war  having  traveled  too  fast  when  once 
America  was  in  it. 

But  what,  perhaps,  has  shocked  andj  horrified  Americans 
more  than  anything  else  (and  it  cannot  be  too  often  iter- 
ated) was  the  knowledge  that  long  before  this  war  Ger- 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  95 

many  had  a  vast  system  of  spies  all  through  America.  This 
system  of  international  spies  was  originated  almost  a  gen- 
eration ago  by  the  Prussian  War  Office.  There  were  sup- 
posed to  have  been  about  30,000  spies  in  France  before 
this  war  was  declared.  England  also  was  well  sown  with 
such  persons  in  every  rank  of  life.    We  had  our  share. 

Dr.  Scheele  told  the  Department  of  Justice  when  he  was 
taken  in  charge  that  for  twenty-one  years  before  the  out- 
break of  the  European  war  he  had  been  stationed  in  Brook- 
lyn as  a  representative  of  the  German  government.  His 
*'  honorarium,"  as  he  called  it,  was  $125  a  month.  He 
had  been  a  German  major,  yet  o^vned  a  drug  store  in 
Brooklyn.  A  couple  of  months  before  war  was  declared 
by  Germany,  he  was  told  to  get  rid  of  his  drug  store  — 
that  is  to  say,  to  mobilize  in  America  for  the  German 
purposes  in  the  coming  war.  He  said  the  drug  store  was 
doing  very  well.  Others  of  these  fixed  spies  got  salaries 
about  like  that  of  Scheele,  a  retainer  of  $1,000  nominal 
salary  being  more  frequent.  In  charge  of  all  these  lesser 
regular  spies,  who  had  been  absorbed  in  the  American 
citizenship,  were  the  consuls  and  the  high  diplomatic  offi- 
cials of  the  Imperial  German  Government  in  our  country. 
It  would  be  a  very  great  deal  to  hope  that  this  system  has 
been  actually  extirpated.  That  it  did  exist  is  true  with- 
out any  doubt  or  question. 

Any  A.  P.  L.  man  whose  work  was  identified  with  the 
larger  eastern  cities  will  note  many  points  of  contact  of 
the  A.  P.  L.  with  D.  J.  and  M.  I.  D.  in  the  testimony 
brought  before  the  Overman  Committee.  It  is,  of  course, 
not  too  much  to  say  that  A.  P.  L.  was  at  the  foundation 
of  much  of  that  testimony  itself.  Many  of  the  facts  above 
brought  out  are  of  record  in  the  A.  P.  L.  files. 

In  yet  another  line  of  Government  work,  the  League  has 
been  very  useful  —  that  of  cooperating  with  Mr.  A.  Mit- 
chell Palmer,  Custodian  of  Alien  Property,  whose  state- 
ments, made  elsewhere  than  in  the  committee,  constitute  a 
rather  valuable  extension  of  the  committee's  information. 

Reference  was  made  before  the  committee  to  the  Bridge- 
port Projectile  Company.  Mr.  Palmer  some  time  ago 
announced  that  he  had  taken  over  19,900  of  the  20,000 
shares  of  the  capital  stock  of  that  concern,  and  that  there 


96  THE  WEB 

had  been  reported  to  him  other  property  of  approximate 
value  of  $500,000  held  by  it  for  and  in  behalf  of  Germany. 

In  a  statement  accreditedi  to  him,  Mr.  Palmer  again 
bared  the  efforts  of  that  malodorous  quartet.  Count  von 
Bernstorff,  Dr.  Albert,  Dr.  Dernburg  and  Captain  von 
Papen.  It  was  the  obvious  intent  of  these  to  use  the 
Bridgeport  Projectile  Company  to  prevent  the  manufac- 
ture and  shipment  of  arms  and  ammunition  to  the  Allies. 
The  taking  over  of  the  stock  of  the  Bridgeport  Projectile 
Company,  and  the  report  by  the  company  of  the  property 
owned  by  the  German  government,  with  the  disclosures 
incident  thereto,  followed  many  months  of  persistent 
investigation. 

It  was  planned  to  have  this  corporation  buy  up  all  the 
available  supplies  of  powder,  antimony,  hydraulic  presses, 
and  other  supplies  and  materials  essential  to  the  manu- 
facture of  munitions.  The  plan  also  involved  the  negotia- 
tion of  contracts  with  the  alliedi  Governments  to  supply 
them  with  materials  of  war,  apparently  in  good  faith  but 
in  reality  with  no  intention  of  fulfilling  them.  The  ulti- 
mate expenditure  of  approximately  $10,000,000  for  this 
purpose  was  contemplated. 

In  a  cable  from  London  printed  in  the  American  press 
on  the  morning  of  January  15,  1919,  a  statement  was  given 
from  a  German  newspaper  quoting  Dr.  Dernburg,  the  Ger- 
man propagandist  who  was  expelled  from  America  some 
years  ago.  Now  Dr.  Dernburg  comes  out  in  the  Vienna 
Neiie  Freie  Presse  and  states  that  Germany  is  depending 
upon  ^'  a  certain  drawing  together  of  Germany  and  the 
United  States."  He  believes  that  nothing  should  be  done 
which  will  ''  give  foundation  for  a  lasting  alienation  of 
the  two  peoples. ' '  He  finds  the  Allies  in  victory  somewhat 
difficult  in  their  terms,  so  that  Germans  turn  their  eyes 
and  expectations  toward  America,  *'  and  feel  sure  that 
their  expectations  will  not  come  to  grief."  He  goes  on 
to  say  that  Germany  needs  raw  materials  for  the  revival 
of  her  industries,  needs  credit,  and  also  a  market.  He 
looks  to  America  for  all  these,  and  says:  *' A  fear  of 
German  competition  does  not  exist  in  America  in  the 
same  degree  as  in  France  and  England.  The  hatred  against 
the  German  people  does  not  exist  since  the  dynasty  has 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  97 

been  overthrown,  and  it  is  quite  possible  that  America 
will  transfer  English  and  French  debts  to  Germany  in 
order  to  give  her  money,  for  America  seeks  not  destruc- 
tion but  justice.  Our  two  countries  will  be  brought 
together,  and  as  rivalry  is  out  of  the  question,  this  coopera- 
tion will  take  a  more  tolerable  form  than  in  the  case  of 
our  neighbors."  He  goes  on  to  say:  ''A  careful  eco- 
nomic policy,  I  think,  will  secure  Germans  sympathy, 
thereby  providing  economic  help  for  our  German  indus- 
tries, now  in  collapse,  and  possibly  awaken  stirring  echoes 
in  two  million  Americans  of  German  origin.  .  .  .  Amer- 
ica will  have  other  interests  in  Germany  allied  with  her 
by  interest  and  by  service  rendered  to  Germany ;  so  taking 
all  these  points  of  view  together,  one  may  well  consider 
that  the  earliest  possible  reconciliation  between  (jrermany 
and  America  will  be  good  for  the  future  of  the  world  and 
will  be  welcomed  by  the  German  people." 

The  human  mind  with  difficulty  can  conceive  of  any- 
thing indicative  of  more  brazen  effrontery  than  the  fore- 
going. That  is  the  statement  to-day  of  one  of  the  arch- 
traitors  planted  in  this  country  by  Germany.  No  doubt, 
it  may  awaken  a  ^'  stirring  echo  "  at  least  in  the  hearts 
of  the  quarter  million  of  German  spies  who  worked  with 
Dernburg  here. 

The  great  danger  to  America  is  her  unsuspiciousness. 
Having  lived  half  a  century  cheek  by  jowl  with  these 
men,  although  in  ignorance  of  their  real  quality,  we  are 
expected  to  go  on  living  with  them  on  the  same  terms 
that  existed  before  the  war.  Great  Britain,  sterner  than 
we,  definitely  has  announced  her  intention  of  deporting 
German  aliens  —  she  intends  to  take  no  chances.  What 
the  French  will  do  is  a  foregone  conclusion.  German  '*  kul- 
tur  "  is  begging  at  the  doorsteps  of  the  world. 

Mr.  Palmer,  custodian  of  alien  enemy  property,  can 
complete  the  story.  For  instance,  there  was  loose  talk 
around  New  York  in  the  early  days  of  the  war  that  under 
one  tennis  court  in  New  Jersey  there  was  a  gun  emplace- 
ment from  which  New  York  could  be  bombarded.  It  was 
said  that  a  German-OA\Tied  factory  building  had  a  gun 
emplacement  built  into  its  floor  with  the  same  amiable 
intention.    Custodian  Palmer  points  out  that  there  really 


98  THE  WEB 

was  a  concrete  pier  in  the  port  of  St.  Thomas,  Virgin 
Islands,  with  a  concealed  base  suitable  for  heavy  gun 
mounts.  That  pier  now  belongs  to  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment. Before  the  war  it  was  the  property  of  a  steam- 
ship company  organized  by  wealthy  Germans,  of  whom 
Emperor  William  was  one.  Its  office  was  in  the  headquar- 
ters of  the  German  spies  in  New  York.  After  the  United 
States  went  to  war,  the  pier  was  sold  to  a  Dane  to  cover 
the  ownership.  The  Dane  could  not  meet  his  note  when 
it  came  due,  andj  Mr.  Palmer  confiscated  the  pier  immedi- 
ately as  German  property. 

Mr.  Palmer  stated,  long  before  the  Overman  Committee 
began  its  testimony,  that  Germany,  years  before  she  started 
this  war,  had  undertaken  to  plant  on  American  soil  a 
great  industrial  and  commercial  army.  She  believed  she 
could  keep  America  out  of  the  conflict,  for  she  had  her 
organization  in  every  state  of  the  Union.  It  reached  across 
the  Pacific  to  Hawaii  and  the  Philippines  and  up  to  Alaska ; 
in  the  Atlantic  it  was  found  in  Porto  Rico,  the  Virgin  Islands 
and  Panama.  Industry  after  industry  was  built  up,  total- 
ing probably  two  billion  dollars  in  money  value,  and.'  bill- 
ions more  in  potential  political  value. 

**  Germany  had  spies  in  the  German-owned  industries 
of  Pittsburgh,  Chicago,  New  York  and  the  West,"  says 
Mr.  Palmer.  "  She  fought  the  war  when  we  were  neutral 
on  American  soil  by  agents  sent  here  for  that  purpose. ' ' 

St.  Andrew's  Bay,  not  far  from  Pensacola,  Florida,  is 
a  very  fine  harbor,  the  nearest  American  harbor,  indeed, 
to  the  Panama  canal.  Mr.  Palmer  shows  that  this  was 
wholly  controlled  by  Germans,  who  were  organized  in  the 
form  of  a  lumber  company  and  who  had  purchased  thou- 
sands of  acres  of  timber  nearby.  The  wealthy  owner  of 
the  German  property  never  saw  it.  A  concealed  fort  had 
been  constructed  there,  and  right  of  way  on  the  shore  had 
been  purchasedj.  Not  even  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  could  have  obtained  a  terminal  on  St.  Andrew 's  Bay 
unless  it  did  business  with  the  owner  in  Berlin.  Such 
being  the  case.  Custodian  Palmer  did  not  buy  it  at  all  — 
he  simply  took  it  in  and  added  it  to  his  list  of  more  than 
two  billion  dollars'  worth  of  German-owned  property  taken 
over  since  the  war  began. 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  99 

There  were  German  spies  in  our  chemical  works,  metal 
industries,  textile  concerns,  and  in  every  line  of  our  com- 
merce. They  had  a  fund,  mentioned  at  different  times  in 
the  Overman  Committee  testimony,  which  was  somewhere 
between  thirty  millions  and  sixty  millions  of  dollars  —  all 
of  it  to  be  used  in  propaganda,  subsidizing,  subornation 
and  destruction. 

There  were  three  or  four  German  firms  in  America  w^hich 
had  much  to  'do  with  the  German  declaration  of  war. 
They  were  instrumental  in  piling  up  the  gigantic  quanti- 
ties of  American  metals,  to  prepare  that  country  for  its 
onslaught  in  1914.  There  were  great  stocks  of  copper 
accumulated  in  America  to  be  sold  to  Germany  after  the 
close  of  the  war.  The  actual  ownership  of  these  things 
was  so  very  carefully  concealed  by  a  masquerading  inter- 
changeable personnel  that  it  required  months  of  investi- 
gation to  get  at  the  real  facts  and  to  discover  that  the 
real  owner  was  Germany  itself.  In  taking  over  these  metal 
businesses.  Alien  Property  Custodian  Palmer  broke  the  Ger- 
man control  of  the  metal  industry  of  America.  It  has 
been  intended  to  wipe  out  these  industries  so  completely 
that  they  cannot  get  a  start  again. 

The  New  York  Times  of  November  3,  1918,  printed  a 
quarter-page  story  in  regard  to  some  of  these  revelations 
which  should  be  made  not  only  a  part  of  the  record  of  the 
Senate  Committee  but  of  the  records  of  America  itself : 

When  on  April  6,  1917,  America  declared  war  on  Germany, 
there  was  in  New  York  as  American  representative  of  the 
Deutsche  Bank  of  Berlin,  a  German  by  the  name  of  Hugo 
Schmidt.  As  the  world  now  knows,  it  was  the  Deutsche  Bank 
which  financed  the  von  Bernstorff-Bolo  Pacha  plot  to  debauch 
France,  which  formulated  a  scheme  to  corner  the  wool  market 
of  the  world,  a  plot  the  object  of  which  was  to  gain  control 
of  the  after-the-war  trade  in  South  America,  and  which, 
through  its  agents  in  this  country  and  South  America,  was 
keeping  tab  on  the  political  situation  in  this  hemisphere  for 
the  Foreign  OflBce  in  Berlin.  How  these  plots  and  numerous 
others  were  planned  and  how  they  were  to  be  carried  out, 
was  disclosed  In  a  great  mass  of  documents  which  will  go 
down  in  history  as  the  "Hugo  Schmidt  Papers." 

Despite  the  fact  that  he  was  one  of  the  first  of  the  Kaiser's 
subjects  to  be  arrested  after  this  country  entered  the  war,  and 


100  THE  WEB 

despite  the  fact  that  he  knew  the  all-important  nature  of  the 
papers,  Schmidt  failed  to  destroy  the  documents.  He  acted  on 
the  theory  that  the  United  States  Government  would  not  take 
them,  and  so  he  catalogued  them  and  stored  them  away  in  his 
private  office  at  Broadway  and  Rector  Street,  and  in  his  living 
quarters  in  the  old  German  Club  in  West  Fifty-ninth  Street. 

It  was  the  plotting  of  Bernstorff  and  Bolo  Pacha,  with 
Adolph  Pavenstedt,  the  enemy  alien  banker  of  New  York, 
acting  as  a  go-between,  that  caused  the  seizure  of  Schmidt's 
papers,  with  the  unmasking  of  scores  of  German  political  and 
trade  plots,  involving  financial  backing  mounting  into  the 
hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars. 

The  revelations  which  have  followed  the  seizure  of  these 
papers  have  filled  pages  in  the  newspapers  of  the  United 
States  and  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  yet  the  story  has  not 
yet  been  half  told.  The  new  chapters  in  a  story,  which  has 
been  pronounced  by  Federal  officials  among  the  most  interest- 
ing of  all  the  disclosures  brought  about  as  a  result  of  the 
great  war,  will  be  issued  by  Deputy  Attorney  General  Alfred 
L.  Becker,  the  man  who  exposed  Bolo. 

The  seizure  of  millions  of  dollars  worth  of  German-owned 
property  in  this  country  has  been  made  possible,  to  a  large 
extent,  by  Mr.  Becker's  seizure  of  Schmidt's  papers.  But  for 
its  conclusive  evidence  of  the  true  ownership  of  certain  great 
properties,  the  Government  of  the  United  States  would  have 
had  an  almost  impossible  job  in  ferreting  out  the  trade  foot- 
holds of  the  Hun  in  America.  To-day  the  Government  is  in 
control  of  great  woolen  mills,  of  huge  plants  now  engaged  in 
the  manutacture  of  munitions  of  war,  of  splendid  ocean-going 
steamships  (not  those  of  the  Hamburg-American  and  North 
German  Lloyd  lines),  which,  until  Schmidt's  papers  were 
studied,  were  supposed  to  be  neutral  or  American  ^Dwned ; 
not  to  mention  numerous  other  important  plants,  all  of  which 
were  proved  to  be  of  enemy  ownership  and  of  which  a  majority 
have  already  been  auctioned  off  to  bona  fide  American  owner- 
ship and  control. 

Aside  from  what  the  future  may  disclose  as  a  result  of  a 
further  study  and  investigation  of  Schmidt's  papers,  the  fol- 
lowing summary,  prepared  in  the  office  of  Mr.  Becker,  shows 
in  a  condensed  form  the  results  obtained  to  date  as  a  result 
of  the  seizure  of  the  German  banker's  books  and  other  data: 

1.  Part  of  documents  that  helped  in  the  conviction  of  Bolo 
Pacha. 

2.  Furnished  evidence  upon  which  Hugo  Schmidt  and 
Adolph  Pavenstedt  were  interned. 

3.  Furnished    evidence    disclosing    German   plot    to    hoard 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  101 

wools  and  other  textiles  for  German  account;  furnislied  evi- 
dence enabling  the  Government  to  take  control  of  Forstmann 
&  Huffmann  Company,  and  proving  conclusively  the  German 
ownership  of  the  Botany  Worsted  Mills. 

4.  Furnished  evidence  upon  which  Eugene  Schwerdt  was 
interned. 

5.  Furnished  key  of  the  secret  telegraphic  code  of  the 
Deutsche  Bank,  which  since  has  been  used  by  all  the  intelli- 
gence bureaus  throughout  the  world  to  decode  wireless  and 
cable  messages  as  well  as  correspondence. 

6.  Furnished  information  to  compile  an  index  showing 
approximately  32,000  subscribers  in  America  for  war  loans 
of  the  Central  Powers. 

7.  Disclosed  payments  of  moneys  made  by  the  German 
Foreign  OflBce  to  their  diplomatic  representatives  abroad, 
notably  to  the  German  Minister  in  Buenos  Aires,  about 
8,000,000  marks  ($1,600,000);  to  the  German  Minister  in 
Mexico,  about  $178,000;  to  the  Minister  at  Port-au-Prince, 
Haiti,  $120,000,  etc. 

8.  Disclosed  the  payments  made  by  the  German  Foreign 
Oflace,  through  the  Deutsche  Bank,  to  its  diplomatic  repre- 
sentatives in  the  United  States,  von  Bernstorff,  Boy-Ed,  von 
Papen  and  Albert,  to  carry  on  different  methods  of  German 
propaganda  and  frightfulness,  as  well  as  commercial  aggression. 

9.  Disclosed  extensive  plans  for  the  control  of  South  Amer- 
ican trade  by  German  interests,  and  showed  German  methods 
of  keeping  a  close  scrutiny  on  the  political  situation  of  the 
several  South  American  republics. 

10.  Disclosed  means  adopted  for  carrying  on  German  busi- 
ness in  enemy  as  well  as  in  neutral  countries,  and  gave  to  the 
authorities  the  names  of  the  German  agents  in  every  neutral 
country  in  the  world. 

The  arrest  and  internment  of  Schmidt  and  Pavenstedt  was  a 
direct  result  of  the  exposure  of  Bolo  Pacha.  Pavenstedt  is  the 
former  head  of  the  banking  house  of  G.  Amsinck  &  Co.,  and  for 
years  was  among  the  best  known  of  the  Kaiser's  subjects  in 
New  York.  The  Schmidt  papers  disclosed  him  as  an  intimate 
of  von  Bernstorff,  Dr.  Albert,  Boy-Ed,  and  von  Papen,  and  as 
the  man  to  whom  Bolo  went  immediately  on  arrival  in  this 
this  country  in  the  late  winter  of  1916.  Pavenstedt  negotiated 
for  Bernstorff  the  financial  part  of  the  conspiracy  which  re- 
sulted in  the  payment  to  Bolo  out  of  the  funds  of  the  Deutsche 
Bank  in  this  country  a  sum  totaling  about  $1,700,000. 

It  was  also  disclosed  that  immediately  following  the  out- 
break of  the  war,  Boy-Ed  and  von  Papen  hurried  to  New  York 
to  establish  propaganda  and  plot  headquarters  as  per  instruc- 


102  THE  WEB 

tlons  received  from  Berlin.  Boy-Ed,  like  Bolo,  first  sought 
Pavenstedt,  who  found  room  for  the  German  naval  attache  in 
his  own  oflace  iUi  the  bank  building.  Later,  when  the  news- 
papers began  to  print  stories  of  the  questionable  operations  of 
the  German  naval  and  military  attaches,  they  moved  to  other 
headquarters,  the  transfer  being  made  "for  reasons  of  policy," 
at  the  suggestion  of  Pavenstedt. 

The  story  of  Bolo  is  known  to  every  one,  and  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  point  out  how  the  Schmidt  papers  led  to  that  traitor's 
arrest  and  subsequently  to  his  execution  by  a  French  firing 
squad. 

Here  is  an  A.  P.  L.  o»ase  which  is  recommended  to  the 
attention  of  those  who  write  short  stories  of  a  detective 
nature :  It  has  to  do  with  a  beautiful  adventuress,  who 
among  other  things  was  known  as  a  countess.  Let  us  not 
give  the  real  name.  We  will  call  her  Mrs.  Jeannette 
Sickles,  alias  Countess  De  Galli,  alias  Mrs.  Dalbert,  alias 
Rose  La  Foine,  alias  Jeannette  McDaniels,  alias  Miss  Ellen 
Hyde,  alias  Jeannette  La  Foine  —  we  need  not  give  more 
of  her  names.  The  records  of  this  case  show  that  she  was 
entangled  Avith  an  employe  of  the  Adjutant  General's  office, 
a  night  clerk,  whose  duties  were  to  sort  the  mail.  This 
clerk  under  examination  admitted  that  he  knew  this  lady, 
admitted  that  he  had  become  very  fond  of  her  —  was, 
indeed,  in  love  with  her;  said  she  had  kissed  him  and 
given  him  divers  manifestations  of  her  affection;  said  he 
hadj  met  her  often  at  hotels  in  the  presence  of  others ;  said 
she  came  to  him  for  advice  about  certain  unfair  treatment 
which  she  thought  the  Department  of  Justice  had  given 
her;  said  he  was  going  to  marry  the  lady  if  he  had  a 
chance,  as  he  had  found  her  a  very  congenial  woman.  The 
writer  of  fiction  can  easily  fill  out  the  details.  The  adven- 
turess was  intelligent,  beautiful  and  accomplished.  She 
was  working  close  to  many  of  our  Government  secrets;  it 
would  be  her  fault  if  she  did  not  learn  a  great  many 
things  about  this  country  and  its  government. 

It  was  stated  that  this  particular  Government  clerk  was 
known  to  be  a  socialist;  was  corresponding  with  Emma 
Goldman.  Other  charges  were  made  against  him,  not 
redounding  to  the  credit  of  his  moral  character.  He  was 
rated  as  being  a  man  slovenly  in  his  looks  and  *'  with  no 


THE  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  103 

moral  and  mental  stamina. ' '  In  short,  the  field  was  pretty 
good  for  the  purposes  of  German  espionage.  Pages  could 
be  written  covering  the  activities  of  this  particular  emis- 
sary. She  was  one  of  a  certain  type  who  will  work  any- 
where for  money.  During  the  Red  Cross  drives  in  Wash- 
ington, she  was  suspected  by  some  of  the  operatives  who 
were  working  for  the  United  States  Shipping  Board.  It 
was  discovered  that  she  was  working  in  that  department, 
also,  as  a  welfare  worker  *'  under  very  mysterious  circum- 
stances.''   She  was  cared  for.     \ 

There  was  a  certain  gentleman  by  the  name  of  Dr. 
Frederick  August  von  Strensch,  who  was  arrested  by  the 
Department  of  Justice  on  testimony  furnished  by  opera- 
tives. The  worthy  doctor  might  have  been  regarded  as 
practically  innocent  —  all  he  planned  was  the  invasion  of 
Canada  and  Mexico  by  German  reservists  located  in  the 
United  States.  This  man  had  long  made  America  his  home. 
He  was  arrested  on  a  presidential  warrant.  Along  with 
him,  there  was  arrested  a  certain  dazzling  stage  celebrity 
represented  to  have  been  a  countess  in  her  more  private 
life  in  Europe.  A  mass  of  correspondence  was  taken  with 
these  people,  revealing  the  fact  that  150,000  German  reserv- 
ists were  to  be  sent  to  Canada,  about  the  same  number 
into  Mexico.  Definite  plans  were  mentioned  referring  to 
the  assemblage  of  25,000  men  on  the  Canadian  border. 
This  one  plot  alone,  if  mentioned  here  in  detail,  would 
give  all  the  data  necessary  for  a  sensational  thriller  in 
detective  fiction.  But  it  is  not  fiction.  This  sort  of  work 
actually  went  on  within  our  country.  Not  only  in  this 
instance,  but  in  many  others,  a  deliberate  and  extremely 
dangerous  attempt  was  made  to  embroil  us  with  other 
countries. 

When  the  merchant  submarine  '^  Deutschland  "  arrived 
in  this  country  on  its  celebrated  voyage,  a  part  of  its 
cargo  consisted  of  thirty-three  thousand  pounds  of  tung- 
sten, scarce  in  this  country,  but  of  value  in  making  certain 
high  grades  of  steel.  After  considerable  sleuthing  on  the 
part  of  operatives,  this  tungsten  was  traced  to  a  concern 
ostensibly  American,  but  really  owned  altogether  by  Ger- 
mans. The  way  in  which  the  identity  of  these  steel  manu- 
facturers  was   concealed   is   proof   of  the  ingenuity   and 


104  THE  WEB 

resourcefulness  of  the  master  criminal  minds  of  the  world. 
As  showing  the  thoroughness  with  which  Germany  works^ 
one  of  the  accused  stated  that  when  he  came  out  of  Ger- 
many to  confer  with  his  associates,  the  German  censors 
destroyed  all  his  papers,  examined  all  his  clothing,  and 
stripped  him  and  washed  him  with  a  solution  of  alcohol 
to  eradicate  any  message  which  he  might  have  painted  on 
his  skin!  They  w^ere  not  above  a  suspicion  on  their  own 
part.  The  Alien  Property  Custodian  took  over,  as  a  result 
of  these  investigations,  the  Becker  Steel  Company,  whose 
plant  was  located  at  Charleston,  W.  Va.  The  details  of 
this  case  are  extremely  voluminous. 

The  passport  frauds  have  long  been  ^'  old  stuff  "  in  the 
American  journals,  and  need  be  no  more  than  referred  to 
here.  At  the  time  German  reservists  were  needed  in  the 
Oldj  Country  (there  were  more  than  a  thousand  very  useful 
officers  here  who  were  much  needed  in  the  German  army), 
the  question  of  passports  came  up.  These  men  could  not 
get  U.  S.  passports,  so  a  general  system  of  forged  passports 
was  set  on  foot  in  which  the  highest  diplomatic  officials 
of  Germany  in  America  did  not  scorn  to  take  a  hand. 
It  was  their  idea  of  honorable  service,  one  supposes.  Cer- 
tainly, von  Bernstorff  —  whom  we  kept  in  this  country 
long  after  he  should  have  been  kicked  out  —  employed  a 
go-between  who  arranged  and  carried  on  a  very  consid- 
erable traffic  in  foreign  passports.  The  ordinary  price  was 
about  twenty  dollars, —  small  business,  truly,  for  an  ambas- 
sador, but  von  Bernstorff,  von  Papen,  von  Weddell,  von 
Igel  and  others  worked  together  in  this  thing  until  the 
Department  of  Justice  men  got  too  hot  upon  their  trail. 
A  long  and  intricate  story  hangs  upon  this.  It  is  enough 
to  say  that  the  frauds  were  unearthed  and  the  lower  and 
middle  class  operatives  in  the  frauds  were  put  away.  Von 
Weddell,  the  most  important  of  these  conspirators,  took 
ship  for  Norway.  However,  the  ship  on  which  he  sailed 
was  sunk  by  a  German  U-boat, —  tragic  justice  in  at  least 
one  instance. 

Another  of  the  well  known  German  enterprises  against 
England  and  her  Indian  empire  was  brought  to  light  in 
the  so-called  Hindu  Plot  —  also  very  well  known  through 
newspaper  publication.     It  came  to  a  focus  in  a  trial  in 


TH£3  GERMAN  SPY  CASES  105 

San  Francisco,  in  which  one  Hindu  leader  shot  another 
and  was  himself  shot  the  next  instant  in  the  court  room 
by  a  deputy  marshal  in  attendance  —  a  fact  which  perhaps 
lingers  in  the  public  memory  even  in  these  exciting  days. 
The  Hindu  plot,  reduced  to  its  simple  and  banal  lowest 
common  denominator,  consisted  in  a  more  or  less  useless 
intrigue  with  certain  more  or  less  uninfluential  citizens 
of  Hindu  birth.  One  phase  of  the  activities  was  the  pur- 
chase with  German  money  in  New  York  of  several  hundred 
thousand  rifles  and  several  million  cartridges,  which  were 
to  be  shipped  in  a  vessel  from  the  Pacific  Coast  to  meet  a 
certain  other  vessel  far  out  in  the  Pacific  for  transfer  of 
the  cargo.  That  cargo  was  to  be  delivered  where  it  would 
do  the  most  good  to  any  Hindu  gentleman  disposed  to 
rise  against  the  British  authority.  It  is  a  long  and  rather 
dull  story  —  how  everything  miscarried  for  our  friends 
the  Germans  and  the  Hindus.  The  rifles  never  were  deliv- 
ered ;  the  conspirators  were  brought  to  trial ;  the  conspiracy 
was  ended.  And  at  the  end,  in  a  court  room,  and  because 
he  himself  had  a  weapon  in  his  hand,  we  got  one  Hindu 
Hun  at  least. 

As    a   mere   trifle,    it   may   be   mentioned   that   Joseph 

W ,  an  Austrian  subject,  was  arraigned  in  the  Enemy 

Alien  Bureau  at  New  York,  charged  with  having  in  his 

possession  a  United  States  na\^  code  book.    W was 

said  to  be  a  **  collector  of  stamps."  He  had  in  his  pos- 
session a  map  of  South  America,  and  a  list  of  warships 
of  the  Brazilian  navy.  He  had  also  certain  sheets  of  paper 
carrying  mysterious  characters  made  up  of  letters  and 
dashes.  He  said  he  had  been  a  piano  player  and  was  tak- 
ing music  lessons  by  mail. 

Lt.    Christian    S was    before    the    Enemy    Alien 

Bureau  at  the  same  time.     He  was  once  six  years  in  the 

German  army  as  an  officer  of  the  Uhlans.    One  day  S 

called  on  United  States  Marshal  McCarthy  and  asked  him 
to  help  him  get  a  job.  He  returned  to  find  out  if  the 
marshal  had  found  a  place  for  him,  and  when  the  marshal 
said  he  had  not,  the  German  showed  anger  and  remarked : 
**  This  is  what  makes  us  disloyal!  "  Marshal  McCarthy 
arrested  S and  arraigned  him  before  Perry  Arm- 
strong, assistant  chief  of  the  Enemy  Alien  Bureau.     Iq 


106  THE  WEB 

answer  to  questions,  S said  he  did  not  approve  of 

German-Americans,  that  he  approved  of  the  sinking  of 
the  Lusitania  and  endorsed  what  the  Germans  had  done 
in  Belgium.  He  was  committed  to  Ludlow  Street  jail 
pending  further  investigation. 

Last  May  there  was  arrested  in  New  York  one  Gustave 

B.  K ,  of  whom  it  was  said :     *  *  Not  only  is  he  an 

officer  of  the  German  army  and  an  intimate  friend  and 
adviser  of  von  Bernstorff,  von  Papen,  and  Boy-Ed,  but 
he  is  also  a  confidant,  it  is  said,  of  the  Kaiser  and  the 
Crown  Prince.  Though  he  has  lived  in  the  United  States 
twenty  years,  he  is  still  a  German  subject  and  is  said  to 
have  paid  out  large  sums  of  German  money  on  Boy-Ed's 
account,  having  had  as  much  as  $750,000  for  that  purpose 
in  one  New  York  bank  at  one  time." 

It  is  enough!  Further  details  would  be  revolting. 
Enough  has  been  shown  to  develop  some  idea  of  the  tre- 
mendous centralization  of  these  international  spy  activities 
on  the  eastern  seaboard  of  America.  It  w^as  with  these 
that  the  cities  of  New  York  and  Washington  had  the  most 
to  do. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  SPY  HIMSELF 

The  Perverted  German  Mind  —  Stories  of  Brutal  Indiffer- 
ence to  Innocent  Victims  —  Treason,  Treachery,  and  Un- 
morality  Hand  in  Hand  —  The  Authentic  Story  of  Dr. 
Scheele  —  Twenty-one  Years  a  German  Spy  in  America  — 
The  "Honor  of  a  German  Officer." 

Comment  has  been  made  elsewhere  in  these  pages  on 
the  curiously  perverted  nature  of  the  German  intellect. 
It  would  not  be  truthful  to  call  all  Germans  unintellectual 
or  unscientific,  for  the  reverse  of  this  is  in  part  true.  But 
continually  in  its  most  elaborate  workings,  the  German 
mind  displays  reversions  to  grossness,  coarseness,  and 
bestiality.  Perversions  and  atrocities  seem  natural  to  their 
soldiers.  These  restrictions  apply  often  to  men  in  high 
authority.  The  German  officer  was  perhaps  even  more  a 
brute  than  the  German  private. 

Take  the  case  of  the  man  Thierichens,  Captain  of  the 
Prinz  Eitel  Friedricli,  which  was  interned  at  Norfolk  in 
March,  1915,  after  a  successful  career  of  six  months  as 
a  commerce  raider.  For  a  long  time  Captain  Thierichens 
was  hailed  in  this  country  as  a  sort  of  naval  hero ;  he 
received  the  admiration  not  only  of  men  but  of  women. 
It  was  only  after  a  considerable  career  in  adulation  that 
the  tide  of  public  estimation  turned  in  regard  to  this 
man.  His  private  correspondence  was  investigated,  and 
it  was  found  that  he  was  carrying  on  correspondence  with 
women  in  this  country  which  showed  a  depth  of  human 
depravity  on  his  part  which  cannot  be  understood)  and 
may  not  be  described. 

This  phase  of  German  mentality  was  manifested  also 
in  the  highest  diplomatic  representatives  that  that  country 
sent  abroad.  These  men  had  no  sense  of  honor  or  moral- 
ity, but  curiously  enough,  they  were  not  aware  of  their 

107  . 


108  THE  WEB 

own  lack.  They  performed  the  most  pernicious  acts  of 
treason,  and  yet  were  never  conscious  they  w^ere  commit- 
ting any  crime.  Von  Bernstorff,  Dumba,  von  Papen, 
Boy-Ed,  Bolo  Pacha,  Rintelen  and  Dr.  Scheele — such  a 
record  of  treachery  never  has  been  known  in  all  the  his- 
tory of  diplomacy;  such  a  wholly  devilish  ingenuitj^,  such 
an  intellectual  finesse  in  conspiracy,  such  a  delicate  exact- 
ness and  such  a  crude  brutality  in  destruction,  never  have 
been  manifested  on  the  part  of  any  other  nation  in  the 
world.  The  flower  of  centuries  of  civilization  in  Ger- 
many's case  had  been  merely  a  baneful,  noisome  bloom, 
and  not  the  sweet  product  of  an  actual  culture.  The  efflor- 
escence of  the  German  heart  is  the  fungus  of  decay.  Feed 
them?  Why  should  we  feed  them?  Trust  them'?  Why 
should  we  trust  them?  Spare  them?  Why  should  w^e 
spare  them?  Receive  them?  Why  should  we  receive 
them?    Believe  them?    Why  should  we  ever  believe  them? 

A  fine  band  of  conspirators  was  uncovered  by  investiga- 
tions of  attempted  atrocities  against  our  eastern  shipping. 
There  was  a  man  named  Robert  Fay  who  had  invented  a 
ship  bomb,  and  who  had  all  the  German  money  he  needed 
back  of  him.  His  machine  was  a  sort  of  tank  which  he 
fastened  to  the  rudder  post  just  below  the  water  line  of 
a  ship  which  was  being  loaded  and  which  stood  high  in 
the  water.  As  the  vessel  was  loaded,  it  would  submerge 
the  tank  and  leave  everything  out  of  sight  under  water. 
Fay  had  worked  out  one  of  the  most  ingenious  devices 
which  any  of  the  investigating  Government  engineers  had 
ever  seen. 

His  scheme,  as  Mr.  Strothers  describes  it  in  his  book, 
''Fighting  Germany's  Spies,"  was  to  go  under  the  stem 
of  an  ocean  steamer  in  a  small  boat  and  to  affix  to  the 
rudder  post  this  little  tank.  Of  course  every  reader  will 
know  that  in  steering  a  ship  the  rudder  turns  first  this 
way,  then  that.  Fay  had  a  rod  so  adjusted  that  every 
time  the  rudder  moved  it  turned  a  beveled  wheel  within 
the  bomb  just  one  notch.  A  certain  number  of  revolutions 
of  that  wheel  —  which  of  course  would  be  very  slow  and 
gradual  —  would  turn  the  next  wheel  of  the  clock  one 
notch.  This  would  gear  into  the  wheel  next  beyond  it. 
The  last  wheel  would  slowly  unscrew  a  threaded  cap  at 


THE  SPY  HIMSELF  109 

the  head  of  a  bolt  which  had,  pressing  upon  its  top,  a 
strong  spring.  When  the  cap  was  loose  the  bolt  would 
drop  and  it  would  act  like  a  firing  pin  in  a  rifle,  its  point 
strikmg  upon  the  cap  of  a  rifle  cartridge  which  was 
adjusted  just  above  a  small  charge  of  chloride  of  potash. 
Below  the  potash  there  was  a  charge  of  dynamite,  and 
below  that  again  a  charge  of  the  tremendous  explosive 
trinitrotoluol  —  the  explosive  known  as  *'  T.  N.  T." 

Suppose  the  device  adjusted  to  the  rudder  of  a  steam- 
ship on  some  dark  night  in  New  York  harbor.  The  cargo 
is  loaded  on  the  ship;  inch  by  inch  the  ship  sinks  down, 
and  this  contrivance,  spiked  on  the  rudder  post,  is  lost 
to  sight.  The  ship  steams  out  to  sea.  Every  time  she 
swings  to  change  her  course,  every  time  the  rudder  is 
adjusted  gently,  a  notch  in  the  leisurely  clock  trained 
below  her  stern  slips  with  a  little,  unheard  click.  Far  out 
at  sea  —  for  what  reason  no  one  can  tell  —  without  any 
warning,  the  whole  stern  of  the  ship  heaves  up  in  the  air. 
The  water  rushes  in;  the  boilers  explode.  The  ship,  her 
cargo,  her  crew,  her  passengers,  are  gone. 

Well,  it  cost  but  little.  A  few  dollars  would  make  such 
a  bomb.  Yon  Papen  looked  it  over.  He  did  not  object 
to  the  cost;  indeed,  Germany  did  not  scruple  to  spend 
any  sum  of  money  of  the  millions  she  sent  to  America, 
provided  it  would  produce  results.  But  von  Papon  was 
not  sure  of  this ;  he  did  not  think  much  of  it.  He  declined 
it.  As  to  the  immorality  of  it,  the  frightfulness  of  it  — 
that  never  came  into  his  mind  at  all. 

One  recalls  reading  the  other  day  that  Great  Britain 
had  shot  only  fourteen  spies.  We  did  not  shoot  one  in 
America. 

The  Federal  grand  jury  in  New  York  on  December  6, 
1918,  returned  indictments  charging  treason  against  two 
men  who  already  were  in  the  Tombs  awaiting  trial  on  an 
earlier  charge  of  conspiracy.  This  was  the  first  actual  trea- 
son trial  since  we  entered  the  war.  The  men  were  Paul 
Fricke  of  ^It.  Vernon  and  Hermann  Wessells,  an  Imperial 
German  Government  spy,  former  officer  of  the  German 
navy,  then  domiciled  in  America.  Their  co-defendants  in 
the  conspiracy  trial  were  Jeremiah  A.  O'Leary,  the  Sinn 
Fein  agitator;  John  T.  Ryan,  a  Buffalo  lawyer;  Mme.  Vic- 


110  THE  WEB 

torica,  also  an  alleged  German  spy;  Willard  J.  Robinson, 
an  American,  and  the  late  Dr.  Hugo  Schweitzer,  one  of 
the  best  known  German  business  men  in  New  York. 

It  was  alleged  that  the  activities  of  Wessells  had  to  do 
with  ''  ways  and  means  of  secretly  placing  explosives,  or 
securing  other  persons  secretly  to  place  explosives,  on 
wharves  located  in  the  United  States,  on  ships  and  vessels 
in  ports  of  the  United  States,  and  plying  between  ports 
of  the  United  States  and  other  countries;  to  blow  up, 
injure,  and  destroy  the  same,  and  cause  fires  thereon,  and 
thereby  hinder  and  hamper  the  prosecution  of  the  war 
by  the  United  States  against  Germany." 

The  final  overt  act  charged  was  that  in  July,  1917,  Wes- 
sells requested  ''  information  as  to  ways  and  means  of 
importing  toy  blocks  from  Switzerland,"  his  purpose  being 
to  find  **  ways  and  means  of  secretly  and  clandestinely 
introducing  into  the  United  States  explosives  and  ingredi- 
ents of  explosives  concealed  in  toy  blocks." 

Had  any  of  these  toy  blocks  come  into  the  hands  of 
innocent  children,  w^hat  matter  to  a  mind  which  would 
regard  the  Lusitania  sinking  as  justifiable  war?  What 
difference  would  it  make  to  a  man  hiding  T.  N.  T.  in  a 
child's  toys  whether  he  killedt  babies  in  Flanders  or  on 
the  high  seas  or  in  American  homes?  Such  men  are 
unmoral.  One  would  call  treason  one  of  their  lesser 
crimes. 

There  was  in  New  York  City  a  certain  German  whom 

we  will  call  von  S .    He  was  an  inventor  of  a  machine 

called  an  aeromobile,  which,  however,  he  said  he  would 
not  sell  to  any  government  but  that  of  Germany.  He  was 
arrested  by  agents  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  charged 
with  uttering  disloyal,  scurrilous  and  profane  remarks 
against  the  Government  and  military  forces  of  the  United 
States.  He  is  a  German-born  citizen  of  the  United  States. 
Enter  now  another  citizen  of  the  United  States  who  spoke 

as  good  German  as  von  S did  and  who  posed  as 

**  an  official  representative  of  the  German  Imperial  Gov- 
ernment in  the  United  States."  This  latter  gentleman 
said  he  wanted  to  buy  the  S invention  for  the  Father- 
land.    S turned  himself  inside  tr.t,  saying  among 

other  things:     **  Everything  is  fair  in  w^r — gas,  poison, 


THE  SPY  HIMSELF  m 

the  bomb,  the  knife  —  we  must  stop  at  nothing.  Germany- 
must  triumph  over  her  enemies.  I  would  not  hesitate  to 
destroy  a  whole  city  for  the  good  of  the  German  cause.'' 

After  S had  been  allowed  to  talk  sufficiently,  his 

new  friend,  who  proved  to  be  an  A.  P.  L.  operative  in  dis- 
guise, caused  his  arrest  by  an  agent  in  the  Military  Intel- 
ligence Division.     S was  struck  speechless  when  he 

found  he  kad  been  trapped.  He  was  held  in  ten  thousand 
dollars  bail  at  the  examination  and  committedj  to  the 
Tombs  in  default  of  surety.  AYould  he  have  been  admitted 
to  any  bail  at  all  in  Germany  in  similar  circumstances? 

Out  in  a  great  city  on  Puget  Sound,  the  Minute  Men 
Division  of  the  American  Protective  League,  after  an 
exhaustive  investigation  covering  several  months,  arrested 
a  certain  man  whom  we  will  call  Johnson.  He  was  charged 
with  conspiracy  to  doctor  steel  and  iron  in  the  Seattle 
ship-yards  with  a  powerful  chemical,  intending  to  commit 
wholesale  murder  by  wrecking  troop  trains.  He  was  a 
pattern-maker  employed  in  a  ship-building  plant  when  the 
Federal  officials  arrested  him  as  an  alleged  German  spy. 
At  the  time  of  his  arrest,  he  had  in  his  pocket  a  bottle 
containing  a  violent  explosive.  His  scheme  was  to  apply 
a  strong  acid  to  steel  and  iron  in  the  shipyards,  which 
would  destroy  these  metals  by  eating  them  away.  He 
planned  to  place  acid  on  iron  about  to  be  melted,  so  that 
the  resulting  steel  products  would  be  valueless  and  the 
ship-building  program  delayed.  He  was  charged  with 
undertaking  to  damage  the  more  delicate  bearings  of  the 
ships,  so  that  they  would  be  useless  after  putting  out  to 
sea.  It  was  part  of  his  scheme,  as  developed  by  the  opera- 
tives, to  place  acids  in  the  journal  boxes  of  cars,  with  the 
intent  of  destroying  them  while  they  were  under  way. 
The  A.  P.  L.  operatives  claimed  to  be  conspirators  with 
him.  When  one  of  them  pointed  out  that  such  a  wreck 
would  cost  a  large  amount  of  life,  the  accused  is  said  to 
have  replied:  *'  Well,  what's  the  odds  how  we  kill  them, 
and  what's  the  difference  whether  we  kill  them  over  here 
or  over  there?  "  That  man,  like  many  now  behind  bars, 
had  no  moral  sense  at  all. 

Not  all  of  these  agents  of  Germany  were  men  of  the 
mental  sh'-^^^dness  of  their  great  spy  leaders.     Johnson 


112  THE  WEB 

picked  out  a  fellow  worker  and  felt  him  out  for  a  long 
period  of  time  as  to  whether  he  would  be  safe  as  a  con- 
fidant. This  particular  fellow  happened  to  look  like  a 
German,  and  to  talk  like  one.  He  also  happened  to  be  an 
A.  P.  L.  operative.  The  accused,  who  is  charged  under 
the  Espionage  Act,  does  not  yet  know  the  identity  of  the 
man  who  informed  against  him. 

*^  There  was  one  old  German  in  my  district,"  says  the 
report  of  a  New  York  state  chief,  ''  who  had  spent  thirty 
years  in  our  region,  surveying.  He  had  been  an  officer 
in  the  Franco-German  war,  and  was  a  recognized  expert 
in  real  estate  values,  appraisals,  etc.  When  we  went  into 
the  war,  he  made  public  a  little  statement  telling  of  his 
German  origin  and  of  his  American  citizenship.  He  came 
under  the  suspicion  of  some,  and  I  looked  into  the  matter. 
One  of  his  men  remembered  hearing  the  German  say, 
twenty  years  ago,  when  under  the  infi.uence  of  liquor, 
that  he  had  been  a  German  spy  in  the  war  with  France; 
he  also  remembered  the  German's  story  of  a  horse  he  had 
used,  which  he  had  trained  to  run,  trot  or  walk  at  certain 
definite  paces.  By  keeping  track  of  the  different  gaits, 
as  he  jogged  along  in  his  buggy  over  France,  he  Avould 
measure  certain  localities  and  compute  distances — informa- 
tion which  proved  valuable  later.  It  was  need  of  such 
information  that  made  Germany  send  out  secret  surveying 
forces  when  she  was  preparing  to  attack  France.  We  put 
this  man  under  surveillance  but  could  get  nothing  on  him 
except  that  he  tried  to  learn  when  transports  sailed. 
Apparently  he  had  done  all  his  work  before  the  war  began, 
just  as  he  had  in  France  before  the  other  war." 

An  ingenious  and  dastardly  instance  of  spy  work  and 

sabotage  was  recently  uncovered  in  Detroit.    Anton  G , 

a  skilled  workman  employed  in  a  factory  making  air- 
plane fuel  tanks,  deliberately  planned  an  aviation  acci- 
dent. He  took  a  tank  which  had  been  condemned  because 
the  bottom  sump  casting  had  been  riveted  into  the  wrong 
position,  cut  the  rivets,  properly  adjusted  the  casting  and 
soldered  it  in  place,  replacing  the  cut  rivets  so  that  the 
tank  appeared  0.  K.  for  use.  It  passed  the  plant's  inspec- 
tion, and  was  installed  in  a  plane  before  its  dangerous 
character  was  detected.    G has  given  up  the  making 


THE  SPY  HIMSELF  II3 

of  airplane  tanks  for  the  duration  of  the  war  —  and 
longer. 

Of  all  the  individual  spies  located  in  America,  one  of 
the  most  noted  and  most  able  was  that  Dr.  Scheele  else- 
where mentioned  as  a  Brooklyn  druggist.  Dr.  Scheele 
was  taken  in  Cuba  by  the  United  States  Government  after 
he  had  fled  the  country  just  ahead  of  the  hounds.  This 
accomplished  student  and  practitioner  of  villainy  was  one 
of  the  finest  chemists  Germany  ever  produced  —  a  descend- 
ant of  a  family  of  chemists.  He  was  a  major  in  the  Ger- 
man arm}'.  That  this  man  had  intellect  is  beyond  any 
question  —  he  had  more  than  that;  he  had  genius.  He 
was  one  of  the  finest  examples  of  the  great  development 
in  Germany  of  commercial  chemistry.  Men  such  as  he  have 
rendered  services  valuable  beyond  any  price  in  almost  all 
ranks  of  commerce,  and  Germany's  military  orders  were 
to  get  them  at  any  price,  all  of  them,  for  German-con- 
trolled concerns.  Such  men  have  helped  give  Germany 
her  tremendous  and  powerful  place  in  the  commerce  of 
the  world.  This  unique  genius  in  research,  this  ability  to 
divine  elemental  secrets,  allied  with  the  hard  working, 
abstemious,  thrifty,  free-breeding  traits  of  the  German 
people,  made  that  nation  very  strong  in  her  position  among 
the  world  forces. 

But  here  again  comes  in  the  proof  of  the  assertion  made 
in  regard  to  the  debased  activities  of  the  German  nature, 
not  only  in  its  emotional  manifestations  but  in  its  intel- 
lectual processes  at  well.  Perhaps  the  one  thought  which 
will  awaken  the  bitterest  resentment  and  the  most  long- 
lived  suspicion  in  the  American  mind  against  the  German 
citizen  is  the  revelation  of  the  fact  that  German  spies  lived 
among  us  so  long  as  accepted  citizens,  made  their  business 
successes  here,  profited  by  our  free-handed  generosity, 
while  all  the  time  they  were  agents  of  Germany  and 
traitors  to  the  United  States. 

In  the  preceding  chapter,  reference  was  made  to  some 
of  these  long-term  spies,  as  they  may  be  called  —  men  who 
were  sent  out  on  their  iniquitous  missions  even  in  time  of 
peace.  The  best  known  of  these  men  is  Scheele,  who,  when 
apprehended,  was  trying  to  get  to  Europe.  Now  he  is 
hugging  the  deputy  U.  S.  marshal  in  whose  custody  he  is, 


y 


114  THE  WEB 

for  fear  some  German  will  kill  him  for  turning  state's  evi- 
dence and  revealing  the  whole  secret  German  spy  system  in 
the  United  States.  This  man  is  the  most  interesting  of  all 
the  known  spies. 

In  brief,  Scheele  came  over  to  this  country  quietly,  a 
man  quite  unknown,  just  twenty-five  years  ago.  For 
twenty-one  years,  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  he 
receive<i  regularly  $125  a  month  as  his  ^'  honorarium  " 
from  the  German  Government.  He  was  one  of  the  fixed 
location  spies  —  one  of  very  many.  He  w^ent  into  busi- 
ness, opening  a  drug  store  in  a  New  York  suburb,  and  he 
prospered  there.  He  was  not  alone.  There  were  many 
of  his  people  about.  He  met  more  than  one  prominent 
German  living  in  New  York  City  —  most  of  whom  now 
live  in  Fort  Oglethorpe.  In  these  influential  circles,  in 
continuous  close  touch  with  Berlin,  supplied  all  the  time 
with  money  from  Berlin,  Scheele  was  appraised  at  his  true 
worth  as  a  possible  agent  of  destruction. 

Came  to  him,  therefore,  one  day,  a  captain  in  the  service 
of  the  North  German  Lloyd  Steamship  Company.  This 
man  carried  a  card.  From  w^hom?  No  less  than  von 
Papen,  a  man  accepted  as  bearing  the  credentials  of  a  for- 
eign government,  entitling  him  to  courtesy  in  our  own 
country  —  von  Papen,  one  of  the  master  plotters  located 
on  this  side  of  the  sea.  Scheele  was  asked  to  invent  some 
sort  of  infernal  machine  by  which  ships  could  be  set  on 
fire  after  they  had  left  port  and  were  on  the  high  seas. 
That  was  all.  If  innocent  persons  died,  what  matter  ?  It 
must  be  a  secret  sort  of  thing,  this  machine,  which  could 
be  distributed  without  creating  a  suspicion.  It  must  be 
efficient.  It  must  be  small.  It  must  work  without  much 
mechanism.  And  it  must  be  deadly  sure.  This  was  the 
sort  of  warfare  —  allied  to  bestiality  in  France  and  Bel- 
gium, and  red  ruthlessness  on  the  high  seas  —  that  was  to 
make  Germany  loved  and  revered  in  the  whole  world,  as 
now,  amazingly  enough,  she  asks  us  to  be  —  we,  her  Amer- 
ican brothers  '*  wdth  whom  she  has  no  quarrel." 

Very  well,  the  order  was  accepted  by  Scheele.  It  was 
simple  for  this  man,  a  mechanical  and  chemical  genius. 
Of  course,  he  needed  some  materials.  Where  should  he 
get  them  except  among  fellow  Germans?    And  were  not 


THE  SPY  HIMSELF  115 

the  entire  interned  crew  and  corps  of  officers  of  the 
interned  German  steamships,  which  were  lying  in  the  Hud- 
son, available  for  his  purposes?  Scheele  got  all  the  lead 
and  tin  and  like  material  he  needed  there.  The  Scheele 
cigar  bomb,  as  it  came  to  be  called,  was  only  three  or 
four  inches  long  and  an  inch  or  two  in  diameter.  Inside 
of  it  was  a  thin  partition  made  of  tin.  In  a  cavity  at  one 
end  was  placed  a  certain  chemical;  in  the  other  end, 
divided  from  it  for  the  time  being  by  a  partition  sheet 
of  tin,  was  a  strong  corrosive  acid.  When  the  ends  were 
sealed  the  work  was  done. 

It  was  relatively  simple  to  put  two  or  three  of  these  in 
a  pocket  and  casually  go  aboard  a  ship,  or  through  the 
influence  of  simple  and  kindly  German  neighbor  people, 
have  someone  else  go  aboard  the  ship  and  drop  such  a 
bomb  into  a  coal  bunker ;  or  better,  among  the  cargo.  The 
bomb  needed  absolutely  no  attention  on  the  part  of  any- 
one. Scheele,  a  competent,  thorough,  painstaking  German 
scientist  of  Germany's  highest  and  best  type,  left  nothing 
to  chance.  He  experimented  from  time  to  time,  and  veri- 
fied his  experiments.  He  knew  how  thick  to  make  that 
partition  of  tin.  He  could  make  it  of  just  such  a  thickness 
that  the  acid  could  eat  through  it  in  two  or  three  or  four 
days,  so  that  if  a  certain  steamship  carried  that  bomb  on 
the  high  seas  for  two  or  three  or  four  days,  in  the  course 
of  time  the  acid  would  eat  through  the  tin.  Then,  in  the 
combination  of  the  chemicals,  heat  would  be  generated  and 
a  fire  was  absolutely  certain. 

These  things  sound  like  the  invention  of  a  diseased 
mind  —  like  the  romance  of  some  excited  intellect  con- 
cerning itself  with  unreal  and  impossible  events  belonging 
in  another  age  —  another  world  than  ours.  But  they  are 
true,  actually  true.  Scheele,  backed  by  these  influential 
Germans  in  New  York,  backed  by  the  diplomatic  repre- 
sentatives of  the  German  Government  itself  —  we  might 
as  well  say  by  all  Germans  also  —  actually  did  these  things 
in  this  country. 

Not  one,  but  many  ships  broke  into  flames  in  mid-Atlan- 
tic. Sometimes  the  damage  was  not  complete,  but  quite 
frequently  the  loss  of  a  merchant  ship  was  absolute.  We 
cannot  tell  how  many  millions  of  dollars  of  the  world 's  prop- 


116  THE  WEB 

e'Bty  were  lost  in  this  way  through  the  activities  of  this 
one  perverted  mind.  Our  censorship  took  care  of  some 
of  that.  Those  losses  of  foodstuffs,  of  fuel,  of  clothing, 
had  to  be  paid  for  by  someone.  They  were  subtracted 
from  the  world's  useful  supplies.  Who  paid  for  them? 
You  and  I  andj  all  the  taxpayers  of  America  paid  for  the 
losses.  One  does  not  know  how  much  Scheele  himself  got 
out  of  it  —  not  very  much;  for,  two  months  before  this 
war  was  **  forced  "  on  Germany,  Scheele  was  ordered  to 
sell  his  drug  store,  and  did  so  —  though  he  complained  he 
was  doing  very  well  in  it.  His  salary  is  not  known  to 
have  been  raised. 

One  of  the  astonishing  and  disgusting  developments  of 
this  war  had  been  the  knowledge  gained  of  the  unspeakable 
depravity  an-d  degeneracy  of  the  German  mind.  There 
are  in  the  Government  records  at  Washington  countless 
cases  of  German  officers  who,  over  their  own  signatures, 
have  written  things  so  foul  and  filthy,  so  low,  lewd  and 
bestial,  that  no  pen  on  earth  ever  would  rewrite  them  save 
one  of  their  own  sort.  The  Huns  were  not  clean-minded 
fighting  men,  but  in  large  percent  animal-like,  low,  cruel, 
cunning,  unscrupulous,  unchivalrous  even  in  their  most 
arrogant  ranks.  This  explains  out  of  hand  the  atrocities 
in  Belgium  and  France  and  shows  what  atrocities  were 
waiting  for  America  had  this  war  been  won  by  Germany. 

Germany  fell  because  she  was  rotten  in  heart  and  in 
soul.  That  was  why  she  fought  foul — ^  because  she  was 
foul,  foul  to  the  core.  It  was  an  amazing  and  an  abhorrent 
'*  kultur,''  this  which  she  offered  to  the  world.  It  is  no 
w^onder  that  her  ways  of  warfare  were  cruel,  merciless, 
unchivalrous;  no  wonder  that  she  crucified  men  andi  tor- 
tured women  and  children  until  there  is  no  human  way 
ever  of  squaring  the  account  with  her.  She  no  longer 
belongs  on  the  clear  avenues  of  the  world,  and  the  one 
epitaph  she  has  earned  is  the  one  word,  *  *  Unclean !  ' ' 
History  has  not  usually  recorded  such  statements.  No. 
And  history  has  not  usually  been  in  the  way  of  discover- 
ing such  truths. 

It  was  this  Dr.  Scheele,  an  upper  class  German  who 
lived  here  twenty-five  years  as  a  spy,  who,  under  German 
Government  order,  started  this  friendly  plan  against  Amer- 


THE  SPY  HIMSELF  117 

ica.  You  cannot  call  that  military  genius.  You  cannot 
call  such  a  man  a  soldier.  His  is  simply  an  instance  of 
perverted^  intellect.  It  is  not  even  to  be  dignified  by  the 
term  malicious.  It  is  unmoral,  base,  intellectually  obscene, 
as  Thierichens  was  emotionally  obscene. 

But  Scheele  himself,  now  grown  old  —  for  he  was  a 
major  when  he  came  to  America  twenty-five  years  ago  — 
is  to-day  a  pleasant  man  of  genial  manner.  He  used  to 
visit  the  home  of  one  of  his  guards  —  to  whom  he  stuck 
very  close  in  his  walks  on  the  street,  the  guard  having 
told  him  he  would  kill  him  on  his  first  step  toward  escape 
—  and  there  he  always  was  kind  to  the  children.  ''  He 
was  such  a  nice  man,"  said  the  guard's  wife  —  ''so 
courtly."  He  is  a  very  egotistical  man,  and  it  requires  a 
certain  playing  up  to  his  vanity  to  get  him  to  talk  freely. 
Yet  he  has  talked  freely,  and  has  given  much  valuable 
information  to  the  United  States.  The  men  who  accom- 
pany him  in  his  city  walks  would  dearly  love  to  drop  him 
out  a  high  window  or  see  him  try  to  escape.  They  do  not 
love  him. 

But  Scheele  loves  himself.  Asked  one  time  as  to  some 
statement  he  had  made,  he  took  offense  at  suspicion  of 
his  veracity.  He,  twenty-five  years  a  spy  in  America,  a 
state 's-evidence  man  at  last  against  his  original  country 
which  he  thus  betrayed  in  turn,  at  this  imputation  slapped 
himself  on  the  chest  and  said:  *'  On  my  honor  as  a  Ger- 
man officer!  "    Great  God! 

In  his  statements  he  was  not  often  found  tripping.  For 
instance,  when  he  said  that  200,000  rifles  for  German  revo- 
lutionists were  stored  in  a  German  club  in  New  York, 
its  searchers  did  find  evidence  that  rifles  had  earlier  been 
stored  there,  but  later  removed.  Scheele  was  taken  from 
Washington  to  New  York  to  point  out  these  rifles.  He 
would  not  go  with  less  than  four  men  as  a  guard.  He  is 
always  afraid  some  German  will  kill  him.  Oh,  yes,  he  is 
still  alive.  The  secret  men  of  the  United  States  know 
where  he  is.  He  can  be  seen.  He  will  talk.  He  is  an 
elderly,  kindly-looking  man  now  —  a  man  who  speaks  of 
his  '  *  honor  as  a  German  officer !  ' ' 

The  story  of  Scheele 's  ferreting  out  is  of  itself  a  strange 
and  absorbing  tale,  which  shows  how  our  own  men  were 


118  THE  WEB 

on  their  guard.  To  begin  with,  his  cigar  bombs  did  not 
work  infallibly  —  perhaps  the  motion  of  the  ship  would 
slop  the  acid  away  from  the  tin  partition  so  it  would 
not  cut  through  quite  on  schedule.  One  or  two  bombs 
were  found  on  shipboard.  One  or  two  were  found  unex- 
ploded  in  the  coal  when  ships  were  unloading  at  Bordeaux. 
The  bombs  were  traced  back  to  New  York.  Dock  laborers 
had  been  bribed  to  put  them  aboard  ships  sometimes  — 
and  sometimes  were  ashamed  to  do  so  and  dropped  them 
into  the  water  instead.  Men  who  can  decipher  code  can 
run  a  trail  like  this.     Scheele  soon  was  located. 

But  Scheele  had  flc'd  long  before.  Why?  "Whither? 
The  Imperial  German  Government  knew  Scheele  was  going 
to  be  caught.  The  large  spies  of  the  German  embassy 
promised  to  pick  Scheele  up  at  Cuba  —  where  he  had  taken 
temporary  residence  under  the  practically  German  cus- 
tody of  a  Spaniard  who  kept  him  in  a  castle  which  also 
was  .  a  prison.  And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  when  the 
embassadorial  train  of  the  Imperial  German  Government 
was  kicked  out  of  America  and  all  these  big  spies  were 
named  openly,  and  all  the  news  of  that  big  spy  system 
began  to  break,  von  Bernstorff,  von  Papen  and  company 
sailed  for  Germany  —  but  they  did  not  take  any  chances. 
They  did  not  stop  at  Cuba. 

Scheele  was  abandoned  by  his  people  —  he  was  an  actual 
prisoner  in  Cuba.  He  was  bitter.  He  might  talk  under 
a  third  degree.  An  A.  P.  L.  man  of  New  York  Division, 
Richmond  Levering,  now  Major  Levering,  U.  S.  A.,  went 
to  Cuba,  got  access  to  Scheele,  took  him  to  Key  West, 
took  him  back  again  to  Cuba  —  but  took  him  back  to  an 
actual  prison.  Then,  finding  he  had  no  place  in  the  world, 
and  no  friend  whose  protection  he  could  not  buy,  he  sold 
his  *'  honor  of  a  German  officer  "  to  the  United  States, 
and  in  return,  he  is  still  alive,  having  paid  as  the  price 
of  life  the  full  story,  so  far  as  he  knows  it,  of  the  German 
Imperial  spy  system  from  Wilhelmstrasse  to  Brooklyn 
Bridge. 

And  there  you  have  a  spy,  a  real  one,  a  man  who  planned 
murder  and  arson  on  the  high  seas,  death  to  unknown 
hundreds  of  men,  women  and  children;  the  man  who 
invented  the  mustard  gas  that  tortured  andj  killed  our  boys 


THE  SPY  HIMSELF  119 

and  those  of  our  allies  on  the  line  in  France,  and  whose 
perverted  intellect  did  none  may  know  what  else  of  subtle 
crime  ^'  on  the  honor  of  a  German  officer." 

Scheele  made  many  revelations  which  never  heretofore 
have  been  made  public,  because  they  were  humiliating  and 
shocking  to  us,  and  showed  how  completely  we  had  been 
befooled  for  years.  He  said:  "We  knew  all  you  had, 
everything,  and  we  used  all  you  had.  You  invented  the 
submarine  —  and  we  used  it,  not  you.  You  invented  the 
airplane  —  and  we  used  it,  not  you."  (Which  is  true, 
as  our  boys  in  the  Argonne  battle  would  testify.)  "  If 
you  had  had  new  gases,  we'd  have  got  them.  We  had 
four  men  for  years  in  your  Patent  Office,  and  you  never 
knew  it.  We  knew  every  invention  useful  to  us.  We  had 
a  man  in  your  army  secrets,  one  in  your  navy." 

"  But  how  could  you  do  such  things  —  how  could  you 
have  men  inside  of  our  Government  in  that  way?  "  inter- 
rupted the  man  to  whom  he  was  unburd/cning  himself. 

**  Good  God!  "  said  Scheele,  '*  weVe  got  them  in  your 
Congress,  haven't  we?  " 

It  is  enough.  And  now  comes  Dernburg  and  believes 
that  Americans  will  hail  the  ''  new  understanding  " 
between  Germany  and  America !  He  believes  that  we  shall 
be  very  good  friends,  now  that  the  war  is  over. 


CHAPTER  IX 

HANDLING  BAD  ALIENS 

Dealing  with  Dangerous  Propagandists  —  High  and  Low 
Class  Disloyalists  —  The  Alleged  Americanism  of  the  Kai- 
ser's Kultur-Spreaders  —  A  Few  Instances  of  A.  P.  L. 
Persuasions. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  A.  P.  L.,  Mr.  Bielaski,  Chief  of 
the  Bureau  of  Investigations  of  the  Department  of  Jus- 
tice, issued  an  explicit  letter  of  warning  and  advice  to  all 
League  members  as  to  their  conduct  regarding  aliens.  The 
Attorney  General  often  publicly  denounced  lynchings. 
The  Bureau  of  Investigation  always  counseled;  prudence 
and  full  justice  to  all.  Surely,  the  aliens,  the  unnatural- 
ized, the  strangers  and  visitors  of  other  races  than  our 
own,  caught  in  this  country  with  or  against  their  will  by 
the  declaration  of  war,  can  offer  no  complaint  regarding 
the  fairness  and  generosity  of  the  treatment  accorded 
them.  These  enemies  of  ours,  these  spies,  propagandists 
and  pro-Germans,  had  better  treatment  than  they  deserved 
then  and  better  than  they  deserve  now.  We  have  been 
too  temperate,  too  fair,  too  lenient  with  them.  The  mod- 
eration of  the  A.  P.  L.  work,  indeed,  all  our  Government 
work,  with  traitorous  persons  living  in  America,  has  been 
a  matter  of  astonishment  to  all  the  European  nations,  who 
perhaps  knew  more  of  the  alien  enemy  type  than  we  did 
ourselves. 

A  reference  to  the  table  of  reports  of  all  division  chiefs 
will  show  that  investigations  for  '*  disloyal  and  seditious 
utterances  "  far  outnumber  those  under  any  other  head. 
The  truth  is  that  Germans  and  pro-Germans  generally  were 
mighty  cocky  in  their  talk  in  this  country.  Arrogant  and 
assured  that  Germany  was  going  to  win  this  war  —  for 
which,  as  most  of  her  amateur  and  all  of  her  special  spies 
knew,   she   had  been  preparing   for   many   years  —  they 

120 


HANDLING  BAD  ALIENS  121 

talked  as  though  they  owned  America  and  might  say  or 
do  what  they  liked  at  any  time  or  place  they  pleased. 
As  against  this  offensive  conduct,  the  A.  P.  L.  showed  two 
phases.  First,  it  saved  many  a  German  life,  perhaps  of 
little  worth,  by  preventing  large  and  free-handed  lynch- 
ings;  and  in  the  second  place,  it  exercised  so  potent  an 
influence  on  openly  sneering  and  boasting  pro-Germans 
that  very  soon  they  ceased  to  talk  where  they  might  be 
heard.  That  any  such  persons  ever  changed  very  much 
in  loyalty,  that  they  ever  gained  any  more  love  for  our 
institutions  or  felt  any  less  love  for  those  of  Germany,  the 
author  of  this  book,  after  reading  some  thousands  of 
A.  P.  L.  reports  of  investigations,  frankly  does  not  believe. 
That  it  was  fear  of  justice  in  one  or  another  form  which 
quieted  them,  this  author  frankly  does  believe.  And  that 
fear  only  is  going  to  hold  down  such  citizens  in  the 
future,  he  believes  with  equal  frankness.  In  their  hearts, 
these  people  have  learned  no  new  principles,  although  in 
their  conduct  they  may  have  learned  new  counsels. 

America  handled  her  racial  war  problem  as  though  she 
were  afraid  of  it.  There  is  small  ultimate  benefit  in  that. 
The  only  reconstruction  policy — political,  commercial  or 
industrial — by  which  America  really  can  gain,  is  one  which 
is  going  to  say :  *  *  This  country  is  America.  It  has  but 
one  flag."  It  is  time  we  laid  aside  our  old  vote-catching 
methods,  our  old  business  timidities,  and  quit  ourselves 
like  men.  Indeed,  it  is  impossible  to  get  in  touch  with  the 
mass  of  the  A.  P.  L.  testimony  and  not  to  feel  bitter  and 
more  bitter  toward  the  traitors  who  have  been  left  immune 
under  our  flag — not  to  feel  sure  and  more  sure  that  we 
have  handled  them  too  gently  and  to  our  own  later  sorrow. 
All  this  is  written  in  absolute  deliberation,  with  a  certain 
feeling  of  authoritativeness.  It  has  been  given  to  few  men 
to  read  the  mass  of  testimony  which  the  writing  of  this 
book  necessitated.  To  do  so  was  to  sit  in  toucA  of  the 
greatest  reflex  of  the  real  America  that  perhaps  ever  has 
existed.  We  deal  here  not  with  theories,  but  with  actual, 
concrete  facts. 

We  do  not  give  authorized  figures  as  to  the  alien  enemies 
interned,  but  it  is  sometimes  said  that  we  interned  only 
about  five  thousand  aliens,  that  we  paroled  a  very  large 


122  THE  WEB 

number,  deported  a  few,  andj  revoked  citizenship  for  only 
two.  It  was  said  that  the  close  of  the  war  would  set  free 
a  great  many  of  these  persons  who  will  resume  their  resi- 
dence, if  not  their  former  activities,  in  America.  It  is  true 
that  we  have  not  executed  a  single  German  spy.  That  is 
an  astonishing  commentary  on  our  laws  and  our  Govern- 
ment in  times  such  as  these.  Let  those  who  are  wiser  than  the 
writer  of  this  book  can  claim  to  be  after  the  extraordinary 
experience  of  studying  the  real  America,  pass  on  the  wis- 
dom of  such  leniency  in  its  bearing  on  later  Bolshevism  in 
America.  Other  nations  certainly  have  acted  otherwise. 
Sometimes  they  have  smiled  at  us  as  the  easy  mark  of 
all  the  nations. 

Certainly,  however,  whatever  may  be  the  personal  belief 
of  many  citizens  of  this  country,  our  public  documents 
prove  the  wish  of  our  Department  of  Justice,  all  its  Bu- 
reaus and  all  its  auxiliaries,  to  be  just  and  more  than  just, 
generous  and  more  than  generous,  to  those  not  in  accord 
with  our  laws  andj  institutions, — a  strange  contrast  for  the 
reflection  of  those  * '  simple  and  kindly ' '  folk  who  for  four 
years  have  exulted  in  the  outrages  Germany  has  wrought 
upon  the  world,  and  who  for  four  years  have  given  the 
world  the  most  detestable  examples  of  treacherous 
espionage. 

At  times  we  did  teach  some  of  those  gentry  that  there 
was  a  God  in  Israel.  If  as  yet  we  have  deported  few  or 
none  of  those  interned  aliens — all  of  whom,  and  a  hundred 
thousand  more,  surely  ought  to  be  deported — if  we  have 
received)  back  into  our  tolerant  friendship  those  who  have 
been  for  some  time  warned  out  of  our  Government  zones, 
at  least  we  have  trailed  down  certain  of  the  more  active 
cases  of  Kultur  spreading  in  America.  Space  confines  us 
to  very  few  of  those,  chosen  almost  at  random  from  the 
thousands  at  hand  in  the  records. 

The  chief  centers  of  alien  enemy  activity  in  this  country, 
as  might  have  been  expected,  were  the  great  industrial 
towns  and  cities.  It  was  in  these  places  that  the  A.  P.  L. 
fought  its  hardest  fights  and  achieved  its  greatest 
triumphs. 

The  great  city  of  Seattle  was  no  exception.  The  report 
of  the  splendid  work  it  did  all  through  the  far  Northwest 


HANDLING  BAD  ALIENS  123 

ought  by  every  right  to  appear  in  full.  We  must  be  con- 
tent, however,  to  extract  from  the  Seattle  record  a  couple 
of  interesting  incidents  of  trailing  aliens. 

The  first  suspect  was  a  German  who  had  changed  the 
spelling  of  his  name.  Outer  appearances  were  in  his  favor. 
He  resided  in  a  good  part  of  Seattle,  in  a  good  bungalow, 
and  shovred  all  the  insignia  of  the  Red  Cross,  Liberty 
Loans,  etc.,  in  his  windows.  He  was  unassuming  in  his 
manner  and  openly  talked  patriotism.  However,  as  the 
case  proceeded,  it  was  found  that  he  associated  with  a 
domestic  of  a  citizen,  and  that  this  domestic  collected 
Canadian  bills  and  sent  them  to  Canada.    Tracing  this  clue, 

the  suspect  C was  found  to  have  come  from  Canada 

where  he  had  been  interned.  He  had  made  his  escape  and 
come  to  the  United  States  without  permission.    He  had  a 

covert  postoffice  box  in  the  name  of  Joe  M (his  real 

German  name  w^as  K ),  and  he  had  been  an  alien 

enemy  agent  of  Germany.  He  was  arrested  by  an  A.  P.  L. 
man,  brought  before  Federal  officials  and  later  was  interned 
for  the  period  of  the  war. 

In  the  possession  of  this  man  there  was  found  a  long  list 
of  names  of  Germans,  all  of  whom  were  afterwards  found 
to  have  served  in  the  German  Army,  but  who  were  now 
corporals  or  privates  in  the  American  Army.  These  men 
were  stationed  mostly  in  forts  on  Puget  Sound.     Through 

these  men,  C had  a  well  established  system  leading 

into  the  Navy  Yard  of  Puget  Sound  and  the  forts  protect- 
ing the  harbors.  There  was  taken  into  custody  a  photog- 
rapher, T ,  who  had  in  his  possession  photographs 

of  nearly  everything  in  and  about  Fort  Worden.    T , 

who   was   associated   with   C in  some   manner,   was 

given  a  hearing  and  released  on  ten  thousand  dollars 
bail.  The  money  was  immediately  put  up  by  Germans 
then  under  suspicion  at  Fort  Townsend.     At  about  this 

time,  T 's  house  took  fire  and  burned  down.     One 

trunk  was  saved,  of  which  he  quickly  took  charge  when 
released  on  bail.  There  were  other  arrests  made  in  this 
case,  regarding  the  final  issue  of  which  nothing  can  be 
said  at  this  writing.  So  much  at  least  for  the  gentle  and 
unassuming  Mr.  C ,  quiet  citizen, 

Seattle  had  another  case  which  ended  in  an  internment, 


124  THE  WEB 

that  of  Gus  S ,  whose  story  is  succinctly  covered  in 

the  words  of  the  Seattle  Chief : 

Early  in  January,  1918,  our  organization  was  requested  by 

the  Department  of  Justice  to  get  a  line  on  one  Gus  S , 

generally  believed  to  be  a  German  who  worked  along  the 
water  front  dismantling  boats  and  storing  the  material,  which 

he  afterwards  sold  for  junk.     Operatives  H and  B 

were  detailed  on  this  case,  and  confirming  the  suspicions  of 

the  authorities,  it  was  established  that  S had  a  cache 

in  a  remote  district  of  the  Sound  where  he  buried  the  stolen 
articles  until  they  had  accumulated  in  sufficient  quantity  that 
he  could  sell  them  wholesale. 

It  was  found  that  he  had  four  points  established  on  the 
Sound  as  headquarters;  one  of  them  situated  about  forty  miles 
north  of  Seattle  where  he  could  dodge  in  and  out  among  the 
numerous  islands  on  the  Sound  and  evade  the  authorities. 

On  the   morning   of   January   9,   1918,   one   Dr.   W 

voluntarily  appeared  at  the  office  of  the  American  Protective" 
League,  615  Lyon  Building,  stating  that  he  was  a  German 
and  had  done  considerable  intricate  work  in  the  Government 

and  that  he  was  anxious  to  serve  our  organization.    W 

was  immediately  placed  under  investigation,  and  it  developed 
that  he  was  a  German  alien  enemy,  and  was  in  the  habit  of 
violating  his  alien  enemy  permit.  It  was  also  discovered  that 
he  owned  and  occupied  a  houseboat  on  the  East  Waterway  in 
the  ship-building  district,  in  the  prohibited  zone  on  the  water 
front.     This  place  was  visited  and  examined.     Our  operatives 

found  documents  proving  that  W was  an  alien  enemy 

and  a  Reserve  Officer  in  the  German  Army.  He  had  on  board 
the  houseboat  an  extensive  chemical  laboratory  and  a  complete 
chemical  library  in  the  German  language;  also  technical  books 
on  wireless  and  other  matters  of  military  importance.  The 
chemicals  were  seized,  sent  to  the  Immigration  Department 

and   examined   by  a   chemist.     W was   placed   under 

arrest,  given  a  hearing,  and  ordered  interned  for  the  duration 
of  the  war. 

It  developed  that  W had  communicated  with  S 

and  warned  him  of  his  approaching  arrest,  and  that  S 

had  departed  north  in  his  boat.  The  League  officers  immedi- 
ately got  in  touch  with  their  organization  in  Skagit  County, 

and  operatives  were  detailed  to  watch  for  S .     When  he 

came  into  the  Flats,  they  apprehended  and  placed  him  under 
arrest  and  seized  his  boat.  On  board  was  found  quite  an 
arsenal  of  assorted  makes  of  guns.  The  examination  took 
place  at  the  time  an  opportunity  was  being  given  alien  enemies 


HANDLING  BAD  ALIENS                              125 
to  register  as  such,  and  this  opportunity  was  given  S 


at   the   Immigration   Station.     S ,   however,    maintained 

that  he  was  an  American  citizen;  he  could  not  produce  papers 
but  his  explanation  was  as  follows:  That  he  had  filed  his 
declaration  to  become  an  American  citizen  and  that,  by  reason 
of  his  activities  against  the  law,  he  had  been  arrested  and 
sentenced  to  serve  six  years  in  the  penitentiary  at  Walla 
Walla;  that  while  he  was  serving  out  his  sentence,  the  date 
for  him  to  appear  for  examination  and  acquire  his  second 
papers  had  expired,  and  that  on  account  of  his  inability  to 
appear,  this  automatically  made  him  an  American  citizen. 
Therefore,  he  refused  to  register  as  an  alien  enemy.    At  the 

conclusion  of  the  hearing,  S was  ordered  interned  and 

sent  to  Utah. 

S had,   for   the   previous   six   weeks,   been   hovering 

around  the  depot  tanks  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company.     From 

the  association  of  W and   S and   the  facts  that 

were  disclosed  in  the  investigation,  there  is  no  question  in 
the  minds  of  the  officers  of  the  organization  but  that  they 
were  about  to  cause  an  explosion  at  this  plant  as  well  as  at 
one  of  the  shipyards. 

Yet  another  good  report  from  the  Seattle  Chief  covers 
the  case  of  M.  J.  B ,  alias  W.  J.  H ,  who  appar- 
ently was  unable  to  keep  all  his  life  as  secret  as  he  might 
wish.  We  cannot  improve  upon  the  report  of  the  Chief  as 
it  was  written: 

B appeared  in  Seattle  early  in  December,  1917,  and 

took  rooms  at  the  P Hotel.  From  his  acts  it  was  imme- 
diately noted  by  our  operatives  at  the  hotel  that  B was 

receiving  packages  under  the  assumed  name  of  W.  J.  H , 

which  name  he  explained  to  the  clerk  was  used  as  a  code.  He 
received  no  visitors  except  two  persons  of  foreign  birth,  and 
it  developed  that  upon  going  to  the  hotel  he  was  without  ready 
money  to  sustain  his  expenses.  Within  a  short  time,  however, 
B was  found  to  have  not  only  sufficient  funds  to  main- 
tain his  daily  expenses,  but  quite  a  surplus,  which  he  was 
using  lavishly.  He  claimed  to  be  a  working  man,  but  his 
hands,  dress  and  facial  appearance  were  certainly  those  of  a 
man  who  was  accustomed  to  appearing  in  society,  and  taking 
life  rather  easy. 

Following    certain    suspicious   activities    on    the    part    of 

B ,  an  investigation  thereof  disclosed  the  fact  that  he 

was  having  considerable  correspondence  with  Germans  in  the 


126  THE  WEB 

United  States,  and  that  he  had  the  names  and  addresses  ap- 
parently of  every  German  in  the  United  States.  It  further 
developed  that  he  had  cards  made  in  Seattle,  representing 
himself  as  being  connected  with  a  bank  in  Detroit.  He  was 
placed  under  arrest  and  sent  to  the  Detention  Station  in  the 
Department  of  Immigration  to  establish  his  nationality  and 
status.  He  claimed  to  have  been  taking  orders  for  a  toy  bal- 
loon  concern   on  W Avenue,   the   proprietor  of  which 

stated   that   B had   worked   for   him  on  a  commission 

basis,  but  that  his  total  commissions  for  the  first  year  would 
amount  to  about  $86.00,  approximately.  This  was  the  merest 
trifle  compared  to  the  totals  believed  to  have  been  spent  by  the 
subject,  and  he  evidently  had  some  other  source  of  income  than 
that  derived  from  toy  balloons. 

The  subject  was  well  educated,  spoke  four  or  five  languages, 
and  it  developed  that  he  had  formerly  held  a  commission  of 

lieutenant  in  the  Austrian  army.    B was  a  sketch  artist, 

very  clever,  and  in  passing  through  the  country,  was  accus- 
tomed to  make  landscape  scenes  of  various  places  of  interest 
from  a  military  standpoint  —  which  sketches,  together  with 
certain  puzzle  sketches,  were  believed  by  the  oflBcers  of  the 
organization  to  be  for  the  purpose  of  furnishing  information 
to  the  enemy. 

The  specific  charge  was  thought  by  him  to  be  that  he  was 
an  I.  W.  W.,  and  he  requested  the  permission  of  the  Immigra- 
tion authorities  to  address  a  letter  to  a  friend,  which  permis- 
sion was  given.  This  letter,  which,  of  course,  was  censored 
by  the  authorities,  addressed  a  German  at  Bremerton,  close 
to  the  Navy  Yard,  and  complained  of  his  arrest  as  an  I.  W.  W. 
He  informed  this  friend  that  he  had  done  a  great  many  things 
which  he  "had  been  ordered  to  do,"  but  that  he  was  not,  nor 
had  he  been,  requested  to  be  an  I.  W.  W.,  and  he  requested  aid 
for  his  release. 

A  very  complete  examination  was  made  of  B and  his 

entire  movements  since  arriving  in  this  country.  It  developed 
that  he  was  born  at  Frankstock,  Moravia,  in  Austria;  that  he 
was  twenty-four  years  of  age,  had  had  military  training,  had 
just  completed  same  prior  to  departing  for  this  country,  and 
was  a  Second  Lieutenant  in  the  54th  Royal  Imperial  Infantry. 
He  was  in  Hamburg  and  Paris  during  1914,  and  just  prior  to 
the  outbreak  of  the  M-ar,  he  came  to  New  York,  passing  through 
England  on  this  trip,  since  which  time  it  developed  that  he 
had  been  receiving  money  from  Germany,  and  had  been  oper- 
ating in  the  cities  of  Hoboken,  Pittsburgh,  Cleveland,  Chicago, 
Seattle,  Helena  and  Spokane.  Regardless  of  the  fact  that  he 
was  heir  to  an  estate  in  Austria  and  was  supposed  to  have 


HANDLING  BAD  ALIENS  127 

reported  to  the  consul  (Austrian)  in  Seattle,  he  claimed  he 
had  not  done  so. 

In  explanation  of  the  alias,  W.  J.  H ,  he  claimed  to 

have  adopted  that  name  simply  because  his  name  was  funny. 

It  developed  that  B had  been  previously  arrested  and 

released,  and  had  in  his  possession  documents  covering  his 
entire  experiences,  as  well  as  information  concerning  his  par- 
ticular   case.     Certain    documents,    undoubtedly    codes,    were 

taken  from  B ,  and  the  only  information  or  explanation 

he  would  give  concerning  them  was  that  they  were  puzzles. 
The  subject  was  well  acquainted  with  the  German  element  in 
each  of  the  towns  he  had  visited,  many  of  whom  were  held 
under  suspicion  by  the  authorities.  It  further  developed  that 
he  had  made  frequent  visits  to  the  ship-yards  and  to  the  Navy 
Yards,  and  that  he  was  intimately  associated  with  certain 
leaders  of  the  order  of  the  I.  W.  W.  He  was  ordered  interned, 
and  sent  to  Utah. 

It  never  was  urged  against  Seattle  that  she  displayed 
anything  but  live  wire  characteristics,  and  it  is  too  bad 
that  we  may  not  delve  deeper  into  the  Seattle  files.  The 
Chief  adds :  ''We  have  many  other  cases,  perhaps  of  more 
importance."  The  existing  records  bear  Out  the  assertion. 
But  we  must  dismiss  this  big  center  of  activity  Avith  only 
a  brief  summary  of  tables  showing  six  months'  work  of 
the  Minute  Men  Division  of  the  American  Protective 
League  for  Seattle.  The  situation  revealed  by  this  sum- 
mary, astounding  as  it  is,  and  humiliating  as  it  must  be  to 
make  the  admission,  is  one  that  finds  a  parallel  in  the 
experience  of  every  great  industrial  center  in  America 
during  the  war. 

TABLE  OP  CASES  INVESTIGATED  BY  THE  SEATTLE 
DIVISION  OP  THE  AMERICAN  PROTECTIVE  LEAGUE 

Report  for  Six  Months,  May  1  to 
November  1,  1918. 

Alien  Enemies   399 

Aliens  and  Citizens  Living  in  Luxury  Without  Visible 

Means  of  Support 36 

Anti-Military  Activities  23 

Bomb  and  Dynamite  Cases 14 

Passport  Applications    1,114 

Loyalty  Reports  to  Government 707 


128  THE  WEB 

Alleged  Deserters   93 

Destruction  of   Foods 8 

Disloyal  Citizens  677 

Disloyal  Government  Employees 35 

Draft  Evaders    86 

Incendiarism  4 

Food   Regulation   Violators 239 

Liberty  Bond  and  Red  Cross  Slackers 938 

I.  W.  W.  Agitators 1,198 

Pro-German  Radicals   990 

Sale  of  Liquor  to  Soldiers  and  Sailors 64 

Alleged  Spies  or  German  Agents 451 

Seditious  Meetings   91 

Seditious  Publications  53 

Seditious  Utterances    449 

Wireless  Stations   21 

Naturalization  Cases   386 

Jurors     542 

Miscellaneous    624 

Total 10,042 

Total  number  of  arrests  made 1,008 

There  came  up  in  the  Birmingham,  Ala.,  Division  the 

character  investigation  of  R.  E.  S ,  a  lieutenant  in 

the  Unitedi  States  Army,  reported  to  be  in  the  Militarj^ 
Intelligence  Department,  foreign  service.  This  man  lived 
in  Birmingham  several  years  before  the  declaration  of  war, 
and  moved  with  the  best  people.  He  always  seemed  to 
have  enough  money  for  the  demands  of  society,  although 
his  business  was  limited  in  its  earning  capacity.  He  at- 
tended a  training  camp  and  received  a  commission,  but 
after  he  had  arrived  in  France,  the  War  Department  re- 
quested an  investigation  through  the  League.  The  result 
shows  that  danger  existed  at  all  times  from  German  explo- 
sives even  in  the  most  jealously  guarded  places.  Below  is 
given  the  substance  of  the  investigation.  The  first  oper- 
ative reported: 

I  have  known  S for  several  years,  and  have  always 

been  impressed  with  his  pro-German  tendencies.  He  lived  in 
comparative  comfort,  belonged  to  all  of  the  clubs  and  moved 
in  the  best  society.  He  never  appeared  to  be  lacking  in  funds 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  income  from  his  position,  and  later 


HANDLING  BAD  ALIENS  129 

his  business,  did  not  warrant  his  living  in  this  manner.  It 
was  understood  that  he  had  no  investments  producing  income. 
I  have  thought  for  the  past  four  years  that  he  received  money 
from  the  German  Government,  and  have  so  expressed  myself 
on  many  occasions. 

Before  we  entered  the  war,  S was  very  bitter  in  his 

denunciation  of  England  for  going  into  it.  He  claimed  Russia 
and  France  were  responsible  and  that  Germany  was  fighting 
for  her  life.  He  stated  that  England  would  rue  the  day  she 
went  in,  and  that  nothing  could  stand  against  the  Kaiser  and 
his  great  war  machine.  He  considered  the  Kaiser  the  greatest 
man  on  earth  and  the  German  people  superior  to  all  others. 
He  justified  the  invasion  of  Belgium  as  a  war  necessity  and 
the  ravages  of  that  country  and  of  invaded  France  on  the  same 
grounds.  He  gloried  in  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  and 
stated  that  all  who  lost  their  lives  on  it  deserved  to  do  so. 
He  criticised  the  general  policy  of  our  government  and  Presi- 
dent Wilson. 

When  we  entered  the  war,  S 's  whole  attitude  changed 

and  immediately  he  was  anxious  to  fight  for  his  country.  He 
attended  the  first  Officer's  Training  Camp  at  Ft.  McPherson, 
Georgia,  but  was  discharged  in  a  short  time.  He  was  bitter 
about  this  and  stated  he  had  not  gotten  a  square  deal. 

I  have  discussed  S on  many  occasions  with  a  great 

many  of  my  friends,  and  the  consensus  of  opinion  is  that  he 
Is  entirely  too  pro-German  to  be  in  our  Army  in  any  capacity. 
Many  think  he  is  an  agent  of  the  German  Government.  Per- 
sonally, I  feel  that  he  is  an  extremely  dangerous  man.  I 
would  not  care  to  serve  in  the  Army  under  him  as  an  officer, 
and  I  would  like  to  see  him  placed  in  such  a  position  that  he 
could  not  possibly  do  us  harm. 

Another  operative  said  he  did  not  think  S a  safe 

man  to  have  in  the  United  States  Army.    In  his  presence, 

S approved  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  and  said 

that  the  people  who  lost  their  lives  had  no  business  on  the 
ship.  He  also  stated  that  he  had  two  brothers  in  business 
in  Germany  before  the  United  States   entered  the  war. 

Operative  said  that  S was  strongly  pro-German  in 

his  sympathies.  He  regarded  him  as  a  dangerous  man — 
particularly  dangerous  if  he  was  in  the  Intelligence  Depart- 
ment. Operative  stated  that  he  had  no  confidence  what- 
ever in  S 's  loyalty.    He  stated  that  S admired 

Germany  and  thought  the  Germans  were  the  greatest 
people  on  earth. 


130  -  THE  WEB 

A  third  operative  prefaced  his  statement  with  the  remark 

that  he  was  a  warm  personal  friend  of  S and  did 

not  want  to  do  him  an  injustice.    He  did  say  that  S , 

before  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war,  was 
intensely  pro-German.    On  being  asked  if  he  would  like  to 

be  a  private  in  a  company  commandedi  by  S and 

pressed  for  an  answer,  he  said:  **Well,  I  would  like  to 
know  my  captain  hated  the  Germans  a  whole  lot  more  than 

S does.''    He  further  said  that  if  S were  to  be 

captured,  he  would  very  soon  be  on  friendly  terms  with  his 
captors. 

Follows   a   statement  of   an   operative  who   had   known 

S for  twenty-five  or  thirty  years,  and  had  been  on  the 

terms  of  the  best  friendship  for  several  years  past : 

Prior  to  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war,  S 

was  rabidly  pro-German  and  expressed  himself  freely  on  any 
and  all  occasions.  He  thought  that  Germany  was  all-power- 
ful and  had  nothing  to  fear  from  the  Unted  States.  He  fa- 
vored the  German  U-Boat  policy,  and  said:  "I  am  damn  glad 
of  it!"  when  he  read  the  newspaper  notice  of  the  sinking  of 
the  Lusitania.  He  said  furthermore  that  the  people  on  the 
ship  got  just  what  was  coming  to  them,  and  they  had  no  busi- 
ness being  on  it.     S seemed  to  be  thoroughly  imbued 

with  the  idea  that  the  Germans  are  supermen,  and  that  they 
could  do  anything.  He  regarded  the  Kaiser  as  the  greatest 
man  on  earth.  He  took  all  the  German  papers  in  the  country, 
and  received  German  propaganda  from  some  source  unknown. 
When  he  went  to  the  Officer's  Training  Camp  in  Atlanta,  he 
wrote  a  card  to  one  of  his  friends  here  asking  him  to  forward 
his  mail  but  not  to  forward  any  newspapers.  He  was  a  con- 
stant reader  of  papers  of  German  tendencies.  He  stated  in 
conversation  that  the  United  States  had  no  Navy,  and  that  the 
safest  place  for  its  ships  was  in  our  harbors;  that  there  was 
more  danger  to  our  sailors  from  our  own  ships  than  from  any- 
thing else.  He  seemed  to  have  a  great  deal  of  information  con- 
cerning the  armament  and  equipment  of  the  United  States  as 
regards  cannon,   small   arms   and   vessels,   together  with   the 

number  of  men  in  our  Army  and  Navy.     Mr.  R did  not 

know  where  he  got  the  information  nor  what  he  did  with  it. 

S knew  all  the  local  anarchists  and  wild-eyed* citizens 

of  German  and   Russian  nationality.     One  day   S was 

talking  on  the  street  with  a  friend  when  a  rough,  unkempt, 
hobo-like  man  passed  them.     S asked  his  friend  to  ex- 


HANDLING  BAD  ALIENS  131 

cuse  him  a  moment  as  he  wanted  to  speak  to  that  man.  He 
conversed  in  German  with  the  man  for  several  moments,  and 
on  his  return  said:  "He  is  a  Russian  anarchist,  and  he  told 
me  that  a  revolution  is  brewing  in  Russia  and  that  the  Ger- 
mans will  not  have  to  fight  the  Russians  much  longer."  He 
always  expressed  great  pleasure  at  any  news  \Vhich  was  favor- 
able to  Germany.  He  did  not  think  the  United  States  had 
any  business  entering  the  war.  He  has  relatives  in  Germany 
now. 

When  asked  the  direct  question  if  he  thought  it  advis- 
able for  S to  be  in  the  Intelligence  Division  of  the 

Army,  operative  said: 

I  would  not  want  to  be  in  a  company  which  he  commands, 
and  I  believe  it  highly  dangerous  for  him  to  be  in  the  Intel- 
ligence Department.  I  believe  if  he  was  captured  by  the  Ger- 
mans, he  would  have  nothing  to  fear. 

The  report  of  this  operative  further  says : 


S had  a  twin  brother  engaged  in  the  tea  importing 

business  in  New  York.  In  July,  1917,  the  twin  brother  re- 
ferred to  said  that  he  would  not  fight  the  Kaiser,  that  he  was 
a  German.     He  was  even  more  rabid  than  the  subject  of  this 

report.     It  was  rumored  here  for  some  time  that  S was 

a  German  spy  but  there  was  never  anything  definite  to  verify 
the  rumor,  though  he  was  very  active  in  gathering  all  sorts 
of  information  regarding  the  material  resources  of  the  United 
States.  He  cultivated  the  acquaintance  of  the  amateur  wire- 
less operators  here,  and  was  a  fairly  expert  telegraph  operator 
himself.  Mr.  R stated:  "If  S is  in  the  Intelli- 
gence Department  in  France,  it  is  an  extremely  dangerous 
thing  and  might  cause  a  terrible  disaster." 

After  S went  to  Washington  last  fall,  and  after  he 

had  received  his  commission  in  the  United  States  Army,  he 
wrote  a  letter  severely  criticising  the  United  States  War  De- 
partment for  ineflSciency.    His  strictures  were  of  such  a  nature 

that  B said  to  R that  he  was  very  sorry  that  he 

had  read  it.  S and  B burned  the  letter.  This  let- 
ter criticised  the  methods  of  the  War  Department,  stated  that 
things  were  badly  handled,  and  that  our  preparations  for  war 
were  inadequate  and  inefficiently  managed.     This  letter  was 

written  after  S had  received  his  commission  as  First 

Lieutenant  in  the  United  States  Army  and  was  stationed  in 
Washington.     A  German  friend  admitted  that  S was  vio- 


132  THE  WEB 

lently  pro-German  before  our  country  entered  the  war.  He 
said  that  Germany  had  a  right  to  sink  our  ships  after  giving 
us  warning  of  the  restricted  zone  in  which  German  submarines 
were  operating.  He  justified  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  and 
expressed  no  sympathy  for  the  people  who  lost  their  lives, 
stating  that  they  got  what  they  deserved  as  they  had  no  busi- 
ness on  the  ship.  He  justified  the  invasion  of  Belgium  as  a 
war  necessity,  and  condoned  Germany's  violation  of  her  pledge 
to  preserve  the  integrity  of  Belgium  because  it  was  a  war 

measure.     S regarded  the  Germans  as  a  superior  people, 

and  admired  the  Kaiser  greatly.  He  was  much  opposed  to  the 
entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war,  said  that  he  was  so 
sorry  that  we  had  gotten  into  it,  and  that  it  was  not  our  affair 
but  England's. 

It  has  been  thought  advisable  to  take  these  widely  sepa- 
rated cases  andj  to  give  them  in  detail  rather  than  to  pre- 
sent summaries  of  a  large  number  of  cases  which  may  or 
may  not  have  resulted  in  sentences  or  internments.  An 
examination  of  these  instances  will  show  the  fairness  and 
shrewdness  with  which  the  League's  Chiefs  and  Operatives 
worked,  as  well  as  their  unflagging  interest  in  the  work 
offered  them.  It  also  will  be  apparent  that  a  single  inves- 
tigation might  involve  a  great  deal  of  patient,  hard  work. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  GREAT  I.  W.  W.  TRIAL 

Story  of  the  Greatest  Criminal  Prosecution  Known  in  the 
Jurisprudence  of  America  —  The  Lawless  Acts  Leading  up 
to  the  Arrests  —  Methods  of  Violence  Used  by  Members  of 
the  I.  W.  W.—  Sabotage  and  Terror  —  Chief  Figures  of  the 
Trial  —  Incidents  from  the  Inside. 

The  greatest  trial  with  which  the  American  Protective 
League  was  identified  was  the  genuine  caicse  celehre 
known  all  over  the  world  as  the  I.  W.  W.  trial.  It  began 
in  the  Federal  Court  for  Chicago,  presided  over  by  Judge 
Kenesaw  M.  Landis  (the  same  of  fame  in  the  Standard  Oil 
case),  on  April  1,  1918,  and  ended  with  ninety-seven  con- 
victions and  sentences  in  one  lot.  The  case  was  concluded 
at  two  in  the  afternoon  of  August  30,  1918. 

The  trial  lasted  for  five  months.  The  preparation  lOr 
it  covered  two  years  or  more.  The  record  is  said  to  be 
the  most  elaborate  and  complete  ever  prepared  in  any  case 
at  law.  The  case  Avas  by  no  means  a  Chicago  or  Illinois 
case,  but  was  a  national  and  indeed  an  international  one. 
The' documentary  and  other  evidence  preserved  in  the 
rooms  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  in  Chicago  is  so 
voluminous  as  to  pass  belief,  and  it  includes  more  proof 
of  the  depravity  of  the  human  mind  than  any  like  assem- 
blage of  written  and  printed  material  known  to  man.  It 
is  the  record  of  the  attempted  ruin  of  this  republic. 

With  this  great  case,  the  American  Protective  League 
had  been  connected  practically  all  the  time  from  the  date 
of  its  own  inception.  It  had  men  shadowing  the  suspects, 
men  intercepting  their  mail,  men  ingratiating  themselves 
into  their  good  graces,  men  watching  all  their  comings  and 
goings,  men  transcribing  and  indexing  the  reports,  men 
looking  into  the  law  in  all  its  phases  as  bearing  on  these 
cases.    No  one  knows  how  many  A.  P.  L.  operatives,  in  all 

133 


134  THE  WEB 

the  states  from  Michigan  westward,  worked  on  this  case 
for  months  before  ail  arrest  was  made.  There  were  fifteen 
lawyers,  all  of  them  members  of  the  League,  not  one  of 
whom  got  a  cent  of  pay,  who  worked  for  a  full  year  help- 
ing the  Bureau  of  Investigation  to  brief  the  evidence. 
There  you  see  the  A.  P.  L.  in  action. 

For  months  and  years  before  the  arrests,  the  Industrial  "^ 
Workers  of  the  World,  as  they  call  themselves,  had  been 
notorious  for  their  anarchy  and  violence.  Countless  acts 
of  ruthlessness  had  marked  their  career;  millions  and  per- 
haps billions  in  property  had  been  destroyed  by  them; 
their  leader  had  been  tried  for  the  murder  of  a  governor  of 
a  Western  state,  though  acquitted.  Nothing  lacked  in  their 
record  of,  lawlessness  and  terror,  and  they  were  inspired 
by  a  Hun-like  frightfulness  as  well  as  a  Hun-like  cunning 
which  for  a  time  both  excited  and  baffled  the  agents  of  the 
law  in  a  dozen  Western  States. 

The  I.  W.  W.  as  an  organization  began,  according  to 
their  Secretary  and  Treasurer,  W.  H.  Haywood,  in  1904, 
in  an  amalgamation  agreed  to  by  officers  of  the  Western 
Federation  of  Miners  and  the  American  Labor  Union. 
The  theory  of  the  band,  reduced  to  its  least  common  de- 
nominator, was  that  of  striking  terror  by  secret  acts  of 
violence.  Their  ethics  were  precisely  those  of  the  barn- 
burner, who  works  in  the  dark.  What  was  their  reason 
for  their  acts  ?  None.  They  all  had  had  their  fair  chance 
in  America — more  than  a  fair  chance.  But,  because  some 
men  had  wealth,  they  thought  they  also  should  have,  and 
if  it  was  not  offered  them  free,  then  they  would  show  their 
resentment  by  destroying  wealth  and  injuring  those  who 
had  it.  Their  plea  was  the  wish  to  *  *  aid  the  laboring  man.  * ' 
God  save  the  mark!  They  did  more  to  hurt  the  cause  of 
labor  than  could  have  been  done  in  any  other  way  in  the 
world.  They  stained  the  name  of  this  republic  so  black 
that  the  most  rabid  labor  unions  in  Europe  protested  and 
disowned  them.  And  they  got  their  reward  for  that ;  or 
at  least  some  of  them  have,  and  more  will  have  before  the 
tale  is  told. 

Sabotage  and  strikes  were  the  common  methods  of  the 
I.  W.  W.  organization,  which  at  the  time  of  the  trial  num- 
bered over  100,000  members,  mostly  scattered  in  the  West 


THE  GREAT  I.  W.  W.  TRIAL  135 

in  many  trades.  They  managed  strikes  in  widely  scattered 
parts  of  the  Union,  and  as  they  grew  bolder,  they  planned 
in  war  times  a  general  strike  of  all  branches  of  labor,  all 
over  the  United  States.  They  first  began  work  among  the 
lumber-jacks,  then  among  the  miners.  They  meant' to  in- 
clude all  harvest  hands  in  harvest  time,  all  agricultural 
labor,  indeed,  labor  of  every  sort.  It  was  the  plan  to 
demand  a  six  hour  day  and  $6.00  a  day,  even  for  all  farm 
labor ;  which,  as  all  Americans  now  carrying  the  war  prices 
of  living  can  see,  would  inevitably  have  raised  the  price 
of  food  unspeakably  had  it  succeeded.  When  opposed, 
they  wrecked  and  burned  and  ruined,  maimed,  murdered. 

*'Big  Bill"  Haywood,  the  I.  W.  W.  leader,  execrated 
*' military  preparedness."  He  called  sabotage — that  is  to 
say,  secret  industrial  wrecking — the  'Sveapon  of  the  dis- 
interested." Perhaps  in  peace  times  our  fatuousness  as 
a  people  would  have  caused  us  to  pay  small  attention  even 
to  the  series  of  I.  W.  W.  outrages.  We  would  have  ab- 
sorbed the  discomforts  and  the  crimes  in  our  old  careless, 
cowardly  way.  But  now  we  were  at  war.  We  were  mak- 
ing ships  and  airplanes,  cannon  and  small  arms  and  muni- 
tions and  clothing  and  equipment.  We  neededj  the  labor  of 
every  loyal  man  as  much  as  we  needed  money  and  soldiers. 
And  it  was  about  this  time  that  Frank  H.  Little  (an 
I.  W.  W.  leader  who  was  lynched  in  Butte,  Montana,  soon 
after)  wrote  a  letter  to  the  general  board  of  the  I.  W.  W., 
demanding  that  the  board  should  take  action  against  the 
draft  law  requiring  service  in  the  Army. 

This,  coupled  with  the  evidence  of  strikes,  and  the  pros- 
pect of  paralysis  ia  many  essential  government  activities, 
was  going  too  far.  It  was  known  that  the  I.  W.  W.  in- 
tended to  get  at  the  mariae  workers,  then  all  allied  indus- 
tries. That  would  have  meant  the  end  of  the  war,  or  of 
our  activity  in  the  war. 

Now,  therefore,  these  arrogant  and  lawless  men,  never 
else  than  malcontents,  became  traitors.  In  order  to  work 
out  to  the  quotient  of  ruin  these  vague  theories  about  the 
'* rights  of  man,"  they  cast  aside  what  shred  of  patriotism 
they  ever  may  have  had  to  cover  their  nakedness  of  man- 
hood, and  declared  themselves  ready  to  cripple  and  leave 
helpless  before  her  merciless  foe  this  republic  of  America, 


136  THE  WEB 

whose  whole  theory  from  the  foundation  has  been  that  of 
the  rights  of  man,  who  fought  in  all  her  wars  for  the  rights 
of  man  and  has  asked  only  in  this  peace  the  recognition 
of  the  rights  of  man.    Ah,  they  were  so  wise,  these  ruffians ! 

But  now  they  ran  against  our  espionage  law  and  its  new 
teeth.  Secretly  watched  for  months  by  the  many  agents 
of  the  Government  and'  its  auxiliaries,  the  I.  W.  W.  was 
at  last  found  with  sufficient  goods  on  it  to  warrant  the 
movement  of  the  law's  forces.  The  charges  were  made 
that  I.  W.  W.  members  had  violated  the  espionage  act; 
that  they  had  fostered  strikes  to  delay  the  output  in  v/ar 
munitions ;  that  they  had  spoiled  industrial  material ;  that 
they  had  been  guilty  of  acts  of  violence  against  men  not 
of  their  views ;  that  they  had  violated  the  postal  laws^  that 
they  had  violated  the  statutes  against  conspiracy.  The 
indictments  were  framed  on  those  general  lines,  and  the 
long  arm  of  Uncle  Sam,  not  that  of  any  state  or  county  or 
city,  reached  out  for  the  accused. 

By  this  time  the  agitations  of  the  I.  W.  W.  had  covered 
Montana,  Arizona  and  Colorado,  Avere  reaching  into  Utah 
and  Nevada,  and  had  Minnesota  and  Michigan  next  on  the 
list.  But  pari  passu  with  the  I.  W.  W.  activities  had  gone 
on  those  of  certain  other  alphabetical  organizations,  to  wit, 
D.  J.  and  A.  P.  L. 

Mr.  Clabaugh,  the  storm  center  of  the  Chicago  Bureau 
of  Investigation,  worked  long  months  with  the  Government 
attorneys.  Mr.  Frank  Nebeker,  the  trial  lawyer,  was  an 
assistant  U.  S.  Attorney  General  of  Salt  Lake  City,  and 
he  was  on  this  case  for  over  a  year.  It  .was  he  who  directed 
the  raids.  He  was  assisted  by  Mr.  Claude  Porter,  of  Des 
Moines,  Iowa,  U.  S.  Attorney  for  the  Southern  District  of 
Iowa — now  Assistant  to  the  U.  S.  Attorney  General  in 
Washington.  Mr.  Porter  came  on  as  Special  Assistant  in 
place  of  Mr.  Frank  C.  Dailey  of  Indianapolis,  who  had 
resigned.  These  men  and  their  aids  brought  together,  as 
has  been  said,  the  most  elaborate  legal  records  ever  known. 
TJiat  tJiey  Jiad  tJie  evidence  is  proved  by  the  results  of  the 
trial — ninety-seven  convictions  out  of  the  ninety-nine  ac- 
cused and  tried.    The  A.  P.  L.  got  tlie  evidence. 

These  men  and  Mr.  Clabaugh  were  all  in  conference  with 
U.  S.  Attorneys  all  over  the  country  from  Detroit  west, 


THE  GREAT  I.  W.  W.  TRIAL  I37 

and  in  conference  with  the  governors  of  many  states  as 
well.  Everything  was  kept  secret.  Then,  one  day,  a  wire 
flashed  across  the  country  which  set  the  law  afoot.  At  the 
same  moment,  two  o'clock,  Central  time,  on  the  afternoon 
of  September  5,  1917,  one  hundred  I.  W.  W.  offices  were 
raided.  The  "Web  had  done  its  work!  One  hundred  and 
sixty-five  frightened  insects  struggled  where  but  now  a  like 
number  of  arrogant  and  boastful  traitors  had  strutted  free. 
At  one  time  Mr.  Clabaugh  took  down  to  the  Department 
of  Justice  in  Washington  a  large  trunk  full  of  papers — 
incriminating  documents  once  property  of  the  I.  W.  W. 
It  would  take  such  reading  of  these  unspeakable  documents 
by  all  the  American  public  as  these  officers  of  the  law  gave 
them,  before  America  ever  could  know  what  foul  sort  of 
traitors  she  has  been  welcoming  here  at  her  own  table. 

Some  of  these  arrested  suspects  were  bailed  out,  others 
held  in  prison.  Of  the  total  arrested,  ninety-nine  were 
brought  to  trial.  The  case  began  before  that  staunch  fight- 
ing man.  Judge  Landis — who  had  a  son  in  the  U.  S.  avia- 
tion corps  himself — on  Monday,  April  1,  1918,  and  a  month 
was  spent  in  selecting  a  jury.  In  all  this  work,  the  A.  P.  L. 
was  active,  and  more  than  once  its  men  choked  off  alleged 
illegal  enterprises — for  the  defendants  were  desperate  now. 
The  opening  statement  was  made  by  Mr.  Nebeker  on  May 
2,  and  examination  of  witnesses  followed  for  six  weeks, 
when  the  Government  rested  till  "Wednesday,  June  19.  Mr. 
George  Vandever,  for  the  defense,  made  the  opening  state- 
ment on  Monday,  June  24.  Judge  Landis  charged  the  jury 
Saturday,  August  17.  The  jury  brought  in  its  verdict  in 
fifty-five  minutes  and  on  one  ballot.  The  statements  of 
the  prisoners  were  taken  on  Thursday,  August  29,  and 
sentence  was  passed  by  Judge  Landis  at  2 :00  P.  M.,  August 
30,  1918. 

The  jury  had  needed  but  little  time  for  deliberation. 
The  judge  in  reading  his  instructions,  dismissed  the  fifth 
count  of  the  indictment,  charging  a  conspiracy  to  violate 
the  postal  laws  of  the  United  States.  After  telling  the 
jmy  that  it  had  exclusive  domain  over  the  determination 
of  the  facts  of  the  case,  while  it  must  take  the  law  from 
the  Court,  Judge  Landis  said  it  was  within  the  province 
of  the  court  to  give  his  opinion  regarding  the  evidence. 


138  THE  WEB 

**But  in  this  case  I  Shall  not  do  so,"  said  the  court.  *'I 
shall  submit  it  to  you  free  from  expression  of  my  own 
judgment.  Your  decision  shall  be  the  last  and  only  one 
on  the  question  of  fact. ' ' 

He  then  explained  the  law  of  conspiracy  at  considerable 
length,  after  presenting  a  brief  digest  of  the  substance  of 
the  indictment.  He  aimounced  that  it  was  unnecessary  to 
prove  explicit  agreement  to  enter  a  conspiracy  against  the 
defendants  if  there  was  circumstantial  evidence  that  such 
a  conspiracy  existed,  judged  by  the  facts  and  the  actions 
of  the  defendants. 

*'Mere  passive  knowledge  of  the  criminal  activities  of 
other  persons  is  not  sufficient  to  establish  a  conspiracy," 
he  instructed.  *^Some  participation,  cooperation,  must  be 
shown  to  establish  the  connection  of  any  defendant,  and 
by  evidence  of  fact  and  circumstances  independent  of  the 
declarations  of  other  people, — that  is,  by  evidence  of  the 
defendants'  own  acts.  Until  such  evidence  is  introduced, 
the  defendants  are  not  bound  by  the  declaration  or  state- 
ments of  others.  But  after  it  is  shown  he  is  a  member  of 
the  conspiracy,  he  is  so  bound,  providing  the  acts  are  in 
furtherance  of  the  common  purpose." 

The  court  also  instructed  that  if  any  defendants  entered 
the  conspiracy  after  it  started,  knowing  its  purpose,  they 
were  equally  guilty  as  if  they  had  been  of  those  who 
originally  conspired,  but  he  tempered  this  by  suggesting 
that  they  might  all  have  been  guilty  of  minor  conspiracies 
in  different  places,  and  he  stated  that  if  these  were  not 
related  to  a  common  purpose,  they  were  not  guilty  under 
the  indictment.  He  also  announced  that  they  might  all  be 
guilty  of  the  acts  of  violence  set  forth  in  the  indictment, 
and  yet,  if  these  were  not  related  to  a  common  conspiracy, 
they  were  not  guilty  in  the  charge  in  the  case. 

Both  sides  professed  satisfaction  with  the  instructions. 
The  sentences  of  the  Court  sent  Haywood  and  fourteen 
others,  his  principal  aids,  to  the  penitentiary  for  twenty 
years.  Thirty-three  men  got  ten  years,  the  same  number 
got  five  years ;  twelve  men  got  a  year  and  a  day,  two  men 
got  off  with  two  days  in  jail,  and  two  had  their  cases 
continued.  There  was  well  nigh  a  train  load  of  them  that 
started  for  Leavenworth  federal  penitentiary  the  next  day. 


THE  GREAT  I.  W.  W.  TRIAL  139 

The  Department  of  Justice  could  not  find  handcuffs  enough 
in  the  city  of  Chicago  to  accommodate  all  the  prisoners 
on  that  train! 

The  total  time  covered  by  these  I.  W.  "VV.  sentences 
amounts  to  eight  hundred  and  seven  years  and  twenty 
days.  The  world  is  deprived  of  that  much-too-independent 
work  in  a  time  when  the  world  needs  honest  labor.  Hay- 
wood's boast  that  there  are  100,000  uncaught  and  unrepent- 
ant I.  W.  W. 's  in  the  United  States  alone  is  all  the  proof 
needed  of  the  nature  of  the  men  thus  put  away. 

These  men,  like  most  under-cover  criminals,  were  cow- 
ards. HayAvood's  face  went  white  when  he  heard  sentence 
passed  on  him.  The  prisoners,  but  lately  sneering  and 
arrogant,  now  sat  overwhelmed.  Their  friends  and  adhe- 
rents also  were  stunned.  The  court  room  was  filled  with 
armed  U.  S.  Marshals  and  A.  P.  L.  men,  all  unknown  and 
all  ready  for  trouble.  There  was  no  trouble.  Dead  silence 
was  in  the  room.  All  bail  was  cancelled,  of  course,  and 
the  march  to  jail  began. 

What  did  the  Government  prove  against  the  I.  W.  W.  's  ? 
That  they  had  been  guilty  of  almost  everything  a  depraved 
mind  could  invent  in  the  way  of  crime.  The  public  is 
already  conversant  with  the  argot  of  the  band.  The  '*sab 
cat,"  or  worker  of  sabotage — secret  destruction  of  prop- 
erty— was  a  title  of  pride  among  them.  * '  "VYobblies, " 
*'high  jacks,"  **scissor-bills,"  '^bundle-stiffs" — all  were 
part  of  the  personnel  put  in  evidence.  A  ** clock"  was 
divulged  to  mean  a  phosphorus  bomb,  intended  to  be  fired 
by  the  sun  and  set  a  wheat  stack  ablaze. 

These  men  spiked  a  great  many  spruce  trees  so  that  mill 
saws  were  ruined  on  the  logs.  They  killed  vineyards  in 
California,  and  claimed  to  have  burned  $2,000,000  worth 
of  wheat  in  that  state  alone.  They  not  only  burned  wheat 
in  the  stack,  but  sowed  spikes  to  damage  reapers.  They 
dropped  matches  and  bits  of  metal  in  threshing  machines. 
They  put  emery  in  delicate  machine  bearings.  In  canning 
factories  they  mixed  the  labels,  so  that  grades  were  vitiated 
for  the  vegetables  sent  out.  They  polluted  or  poisoned 
canned  goods  with  dead  rats  and  the  like  in  factories  where 
they  worked.  No  doubt  also  they  set  forest  fires,  and 
beyond  doubt  caused  explosions  that  destroyed  hundreds 


140  THE  WEB 

of  thousands  of  dollars  in  property.  They  did  this  to 
terrorize  their  own  country  in  its  day  of  peril.  They  were 
not  w^orth  the  name  of  men.  You  can  not  make  citizens 
out  of  such  creatures.    Fear  is  all  they  understand. 

Their  literature  was  a  continuous  blasphemy.  Cursing 
the  name  of  the  Savior  was  nothing  to  their  writers.  They 
put  lime  in  men's  shoes  and  burned  their  feet  to  the  bone. 
They  had  a  special  sort  of  club  they  used  in  attacking 
* '  scabs. ' '  It  had  short,  sharp  nails  driven  along  it,  painted 
the  color  of  the  club  so  they  could  not  easily  be  seen.  The 
victim  w^ould  catch  at  the  club  to  wrest  it  from  his  assail- 
ant. It  was  then  jerked  through  his  hands,  often  tearing 
out  the  sinews,  always  scarring  and  often  maiming  him 
forever.  Always  they  were  cowards.  To  injure  and  not 
destroy  was  part  of  their  religion.  ''Strike  while  you 
work"  meant  to  disable  a  machine  for  a  while  and  so  to 
stop  work  for  the  crew  or  for  the  whole  plant.  ''Feed  the 
kitty  more  cream"  meant  to  use  more  emery  on  bearings, 
to  do  more  dirt  in  factories,  to  wreck  and  mar  and  mutilate 
more  cunningly  and  covertly — and  to  escape  by  feigning 
the  innocent  laboring  man.  If  they  were  not  all  Huns, 
they  had  the  foul  Hun  imagination,  and  also  the  methods 
of  the  Hun. 

By  December  of  1918,  the  trial  of  a  half  hundred  more 
alleged  I.  W.  W.  men  was  progressing  at  Sacramento, 
California.  The  attempt  of  the  prosecution  there  was  to 
shovv^  a  nation-wide  plot  against  the  Government  of  the 
Unitedj  States.  And  again,  A.  P.  L.  had  the  evidence  ready, 
ticketed  and  tabulated,  for  A.  P.  L.  covers  all  of  the 
United  States  and  not  merely  one  part.  On  January  16, 
1919,  forty-six  of  the  defendants  were  convicted. 

If  we  have  100,000  I.  W.  W.  members  such  as  these  yet 
among  us,  and  internment  camps  full  of  Germans  and  pro- 
Germans,  would  there  not  seem  need  for  a  house  cleaning? 
It  is  time  now^  for  a  new  American  point  of  view.  We  are 
not  going  to  allow  America  to  be  used  as  it  has  been  by 
these  men.    Fear  at  least  they  shall  understand. 


CHAPTER  XI 


THE  SLACKER  RAIDS 


How  the  A.  P.  L.  Made  Patriots  —  Chasing  the  Slacker  — 
Teaching  the  Love  of  the  Flag  —  Incidents  of  Western 
Raids. 

Even  had  ^Ir.  Bryan's  famous  prophecy  come  true,  that. 
a  million  armed  men  would  spring  up  over  night  and  so 
end  at  once  any  trouble  America  might  presumably  expe- 
rience in  going  to  war,  there  still  would  have  existed  a 
vast  deficit  in  our  Army,  which  at  the  time  of  the  Armistice 
had  more  than  two  million  men  armed  and  on  the  soil  of 
France,  almost  as  many  in  training,  and  ten  times  as  many 
listed  as  army  material  if  needed — although,  to  be  sure, 
they  had  not  sprung  up  either  armed  or  equipped,  as  per- 
haps France  or  Great  Britain  could  testify.  The  new  draft 
ages  of  18  to  45  swept  in  a  vast  additional  army  under  the 
latest  conscription  act,  although  the  first  registration,  those 
of  21  to  31,  had  set  on  foot  our  first  American  forces — as 
fine  soldiers  as  ever  stood  on  leather. 

A  great  many  phrases  are  made  in  time  of  war  about 
war  itself,  and  most  of  these  come  around  to  the  ancient 
recruiting  sergeant's  inviting  motto  recounting  the  glory 
of  dying  for  one's  country.  The  Napoleonic  wars  were 
fought  on  the  death-or-glory  basis;  but  Napoleon  got  his 
troops  by  rigid  conscription.  We  fought  this  war  on  a 
more  sober  basis  of  necessity.  Most  of  us  who  are  old 
enough  and  wise  enough  to  study  human  nature  and  world 
politics  knew  that  commercial  jealousy,  and  not  any  ab- 
stract theories  about  democracy  and  the  rights  of  man,  lay 
basically  under  this  war,  as  they  have  lain  under  most 
other  wars.  And  the  boys  of  the  Avorld — youth  being 
resilient,  of  high  pulse  and  low  blood  pressure,  and  believ- 
ing, as  youth  always  does,  that  nothing  wrong  can  happen 
to  youth  and  hope — were  called  on  once  more  to  fight  the 

141 


142  THE  WEB 

wars  of  the  world,  as  the  boys  always  have  been  asked 
to  do. 

Youth  and  middle  age  volunteered,  old  age  itself  volun- 
teered, but  the  truth  became  obvious  that  our  volunteer 
army  would  not  spring  armed  over  night  in  sufficient  num- 
bers. In  fairness,  we  passed  our  draft  acts,  euphonically 
termed  *' Selective  Service  Acts,"  it  being  inten-ded  that 
this  action  should  bring  America  to  its  focus,  and  should 
put  under  arms  warm  and  lukewarm  lovers  of  our  flag  alike. 
As  it  seems  to  this  writer,  that  originally  was  unfair  only 
in  that  it  made  the  maximum  service  age  too  low.  It  cast 
the  burden  of  the  war  on  the  boys,  the  young  men,  most 
of  whom  had  never  felt  hate  against  any  country,  and 
knew  little  about  the  causes  of  this  war ;  for  soldiers  often 
do  not  really  know  why  they  fight. 

Under  the  weak  American  pacifist  propaganda,  there  lay 
much  human  nature  and  very  much  more  of  shrewd  Ger- 
man propaganda.  Germany  always  has  had  this  country 
sown  with  spies  and  secret  agents,  as  we  have  shown,  and 
always  has  counted  very  largely  on  the  German- American 
loyalty  to  the  flag  of  Germany.  That  very  able  spy.  Prince 
Henry  of  Prussia,  brother  to  that  now  very  contemptible 
but  once  very  arrogant  coward,  William  Hohenzollern, 
carried  back  to  his  royal  brother  the  most  confident  reports 
regarding  potential  German  forces  in  America.  He  was 
especially  well  received  in  Milwaukee  and  Chicago,  where 
he  was  met  and  welcomed  by  officials  not  unmindful  of 
the  value  of  the  German  vote. 

We  find  all  these  influences  enlisted  to  aid  and  abet  any 
natural  reluctance  of  boys  to  go  to  war,  boys  of  the  noblest 
and  bravest  souls,  who  none  the  less  had  mothers  to  weep 
over  them,  sisters  and  sweethearts  to  hold  them  back.  So 
there  became  apparent,  in  more  cities  than  one,  the  truth 
that  a  great  many  young  men  had  not  registered,  had  not 
filled  out  questionnaires,  were  deserting,  or  were  in  some 
way  evading  the  draft. 

Very  naturally,  an  intense  feeling  grew  up  against  these 
draft-dodgers  and  slackers,  a  feeling  based  on  the  fair-play 
principle.  If  one  man's  son  must  go,  why  not  the  next 
man's,  especially  as  that  next  man  might  be  a  secret  pro- 
German  trying  to  protect  his  blood  as  well  as  his  property? 


THE  SLACKER  RAIDS  143 

But  the  blood  had  really  nothing  to  do  with  the  real  ques- 
tion between  the  government  and  the  man  needed  with  the 
colors.  The  law  was  the  law,  and  it  played  no  favorites 
after  the  exemption  boards  were  done.  The  fit  man  of 
proper  age  must  show  himself. 

Orders  went  out,  in  the  summer  of  1918,  from  the  De- 
partment of  Justice  to  throw  the  net  for  slackers.  That 
meant  the  immediate  mobilization  for  police  duty  not  only 
of  many  soldiers  and  sailors,  many  policemen  and  all  the 
force  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation,  but  also  of  the  entire 
personnel  of  the  American  Protective  League.  With  the 
exception  of  the  I.  W.  W.  cases,  the  aid  the  Chicago  divi- 
sion of  the  League  gave  in  the  great  raids  of  July  11,  12, 
13  and  14,  in  1918,  was  its  most  important  single  contribu- 
tion to  the  welfare  of  the  country.  The  New  York  slacker 
raids  (of  a  certain  publicity),  those  carried  on  also  in 
Philadelphia,  San  Francisco,  and  many  other  cities,  were 
all  so  similar  in  method,  that  the  story  of  the  Chicago 
raids  will  describe  them  all. 

The  big  slacker  drive  in  Chicago  meant  the  mobilization 
of  the  entire  League  membership,  and  over  10,000  men 
were  enlisted  from  this  organization  alone  as  operatives  in 
the  slacker  search.  These  men  interrogated  over  150,000 
suspects,  and  seized  over  20,000 ;  and  they  inducted  into  the 
army,  as  willing  or  unwilling  patriots,  around  1,400  young 
men  of  that  one  city  who  otherwise  would  not  have  served^ 
At  one  time  they  had  herded  on  the  great  Municipal  Pier 
over  1,100  men,  all  of  whom  had  to  pass  the  night  there. 
Countless  motor  cars  and  wagons  carried  loads  under 
guard.  A  big  tourist  motor-bus  was  requisitioned  also,  and 
all  the  street  cars  were  packed.  Hundreds  of  men  were 
crowded  over  night  in  the  rooms  of  the  Bureau  of  Investi- 
gation in  the  Federal  Building.  The  courts  and  jails  were 
jammed.  Vacant  store-rooms  were  filled  with  prisoners. 
Mothers,  wives,  sweethearts,  sisters,  brothers  and  babies 
made  the  Federal  Building  an  actual  bedlam  when  they 
rallied  to  the  attempted  rescue.  But  the  grist  ground  on 
through,  and  the  guilty  were  found  and  dealt  with.  Most 
of  the  young  men  were  glad  enough  to  exchange  a  bed  on 
a  stone  floor  for  one  in  an  Army  tent.  No  doubt,  most  of 
them  mad-e  good  soldiers  afterwards.     They  were  rather 


144  THE  WEB 

passively  than  actively  disloyal — and  all  of  them  were 
young. 

No  announcement  was  made  of  the  plans  of  the  Govern- 
ment. The  word  was  passed  silently  that  at  a  certain  hour 
the  hunt  would  be  on.  Once  begun,  it  was  prosecuted  with 
energy  and  system.  All  the  current  ball  games  were  vis- 
ited, and  the  crowds  were  told  to  file  out  at  a  gate,  where 
each  suspect  was  asked  to  show  his  registration  card.  Mo- 
tion picture  shows  were  treated  in  the  same  way,  the  per- 
fect districting  and  subdividing  of  the  League's  force 
making  all  this  synchronous  and  smooth.  Cabarets  and 
all-night  places  of  all  sorts  were  combed  out.  All  the  city 
parks  were  patrolled  at  night,  and  many  a  young  man  w^as 
taken  from  his  young  woman  companion  in  that  way. 
Members  of  the  League  even  donned  bathing  costumes, 
and  swimming  out  among  the  bathers  at  the  beaches,  plied 
their  questions  there!  They  took  in  over  one  hundred 
slackers  out  of  the  wet  in  that  way. 

At  a  thronged  boulevard  crossing  in  the  loop  district, 
every  motor  car  was  stopped.  A.  P.  L.  operatives  met 
every  incoming  railway  train  and  were  at  the  gate  of 
every  train  leaving  the  city.  Countless  homes  and  shops 
were  visited.  Sunday  picnics  in  the  suburbs  were  in- 
spected, every  theater  and  public  building,  every  ''L'*  road 
station  and  steamboat  landing  was  investigated  and 
guarded  by  men  w^ho  made  but  one  remark :  ' '  Show  me ! ' ' 
On  one  night  of  the  four,  7,000  men  in  a  short  time  were 
gathered,  held  and  taken  to  the  police  stations.  Factories, 
stores,  saloons,  the  open  streets,  all  yielded  up  their  toll — 
many  innocent,  many  loyal,  many  negligent,  many  culpable 
and  many  disloyal  evaders  who  w^ere  trying  to  dodge  the 
draft. 

In  a  vast  wave,  the  vigilantes  of  Chicago,  whose  exist- 
ence was  suspected  by  almost  none  of  these,  swept  out 
into  the  open.  The  guilty  and  the  lukewarm  alike,  the 
innocent  and  ignorant  conscript  and  the  veiled  enemy 
alike,  got  the  largest  and  swiftest  lesson  in  Americanism 
this  country  ever  had  had  up  to  that  hour.  It  showed  a 
certain  element  that  under  the  careless  American  character 
there  are  vast  capacities  for  self-government  and  a  stern 
respect  for  law  and  government.    Many  a  pro-German  has 


THE  SLACKER  RAIDS  145 

known  in  his  soul  since  last  July  that  about  the  most 
uncompromising  autocrat  he  ever  met  was  a  simple  man 
bearing  not  a  scepter  but  a  little  badge. 

In  general,  the  raids  met  with  no  resistance,  and  though 
there  was  confusion  there  was  no  disorder.  The  people 
took  it  well,  as  might  have  been  expected.  Loyal  Ameri- 
cans would  not  object,  disloyal  ones  dared  not.  The  gen- 
eral working  out  of  the  widely-scattered  raids  was  admir- 
able. As  to  the  rapidity  and  thoroughness  of  the  League's 
work,  it  nerer  has  done  better  anywhere,  because  by  this 
time  it  had  growai  into  a  well-drilled  and  perfectly-organ- 
ized body  of  constabulary.  As  covering  the  public  attitude 
of  this  city  towards  the  raids — similar  raids  were  met  with 
worse  receptions  in  other  cities  —  a  great  daily,  the  Chicago 
Tribune,  printed  the  following  editorial  comment: 

The  object  of  the  roundup  of  draft  registrants  was,  of 
course,  to  find  those  who  are  evading  the  law  and  bring  them 
into  the  service.  But  the  results  of  the  drive  go  considerably 
beyond  that.  It  has  proved  the  splendid  spirit  of  the  commu- 
nity. 

Americans  do  not  like  to  be  interfered  with  by  officials. 
They  are  not  accustomed  to  it,  and  they  resent  it  in  normal 
times,  even  when  it  is  quite  justifiable.  But  though  it  has 
been  by  no  means  convenient  to  be  stopped  on  the  way  to 
work,  interrogated,  sent  back  home  for  credentials,  or  taken 
in  custody  pending  investigation,  there  has  been  in  this  round- 
up a  general  good-natured  acceptance  of  the  process,  and  in 
the  vast  majority  of  cases,  a  cordial  co-operation  with  the 
authorities. 

A  part  of  the  credit  for  this  undoubtedly  belongs  to  the  tact 
and  good  sense  shown  by  the  draft  authorities  and  the  volun- 
teers of  the  American  Protective  League,  who  deserve  con- 
gratulation upon  the  skill  with  which  they  have  accomplished 
a  by  no  means  easy  task  with  a  minimum  of  friction  and  a 
maximum  of  thoroughness.  But  if  the  authorities  showed 
good  spirit,  the  public  met  them  half  way,  and  the  total  ex- 
perience proves  the  excellent  morale  now  existing.  What- 
ever is  necessary  to  get  on  with  the  war  is  accepted  without 
complaint.  Virtually  everybody  wants  to  help.  Furthermore, 
the  number  of  slackers  found  in  proportion  to  the  number  of 
men  questioned  is  gratifyingly  small. 

The  young  manhood  is  sound.  As  it  is  called  on  for  service 
small  or  great,  it  will  respond  promptly  and  spiritedly. 


146  THE  WEB 

There  are  two  distinct  points  of  view  as  to  the  slacker 
raids,  so  called,  and  criticisms  as  Avell  as  praise  have  come 
to  the  A.  P.  L.  for  its  part  in  them  all  over  the  country. 
Naturally,  no  miracle  was  wrought  in  human  nature.  The 
families  of  the  men  who  were  hid  or  shielded  were  no  more 
loyal  after  their  men  were  taken  than  they  had  been 
before.  The  conscientious  objector  experienced  no  stiffen- 
ing of  fiber  in  his  flabby  soul.  But  even  these  would  have 
felt  otherwise  towards  the  slacker  drives  had  they  known 
all  the  truth.  Ask  the  men  themselves  who  were  inducted 
into  the  army  what  they  think  about  it  now.  Nine-tenths 
of  them  will  say  that  they  are  ashamed  that  they  had  to 
be  asked  twice  to  go  into  the  army.  The  other  one-tenth 
is  the  better  for  having  gone,  whether  or  not  they  will 
confess  so  much.  As  a  saving  influence,  a  mere  reclama- 
tion enterprise,  the  slacker  raids  were  a  vast  agency  for 
the  public  good.  They  were  not  man-hunters,  but  man- 
savers,  these  men  who  conducted  the  raids. 

Just  one  instance  of  this  truth  must  serve  for  all  the 
many  communities  who  engaged  in  this  work  and  who 
caught,  in  all,  perhaps,  a  half  million  men  for  examination, 
and  held  a  tenth  of  all  they  caught.  It  is  only  a  little 
anecdote,  but  it  makes  the  best  answer  possible  to  all  the 
critics  of  the  Selective  Service  Act. 

A  gentleman  came  into  the  National  Headquarters  with 
certain  papers  in  the  way  of  reports,  and  announced  that 
he  was  the  Chief  of  the  Akron,  Ohio,  Division.  He  offered 
the  usual  apologies — by  this  time  more  or  less  familiar  at 
the  book  desk — that  he  had  been  able  to  do  so  little  when 
he  had  wanted  to  do  so  much  in  the  work  of  the  A.  P.  L. 
**But  there  is  one  thing  that  I  wish  you  would  put  in  this 
book,'*  he  said,  ^'to  show  people  what  this  League  has 
done  in  the  remaking  of  men.  I  don't  care  whether  you 
say  another  thing  for  Akron,  but  I  want  to  tell  this  story  of  a 
man  we  saved. 

**A  young  woman  came  to  my  office  and  complained  of 
her  husband.  *I  am  almost  desperate  about  Joe,'  she  said 
to  me.  *He  drinks  and  drinks,  and  hangs  around  the 
saloons.  He  hasn't  given  me  a  cent  in  eight  months,  and 
I  don't  know  what  to  do.  I — I  love  him.  I  don't  want 
him  to  go.    But  do  you  think  the  army  would  do  him  any 


THE  SLACKER  RAIDS  147 

good.    He  doesn't  do  anything  for  me  and  our  baby.' 

''  'The  army  will  see,'  I  said  to  her.  So  I  went  and 
found  her  husband — in  a  saloon,  drunk,  shabby,  dead  to 
all  pride  and  all  ambition,  about  as  poor-looking  material 
for  a  soldier  as  you  ever  saw.  'That's  Joe,'  said  his  wife, 
when  I  brought  them  together  in  my  office. 

''Well,  I  sent  Joe  to  jail  to  think  things  over.  When  he 
was  in  his  cell,  his  wife  took  him  in  a  tray  full  of  good 
things  to  eat,  some  hot  coffee,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing. 
I  went  with  her.  'You  see,'  I  said  to  him,  'how  much  your 
wife  is  doing  now  for  j'our  support — more  than  you  have 
done  for  her  in  a  year.    What  do  you  think  about  it  now?' 

"Well,  he  was  inside  the  draft  age,  and  we  sent  him 
into  the  Army.  We  saw  to  it  that  his  wife  got  her  share 
of  his  pay — the  first  support  he  had  given  her  in  many 
months. 

"I  forgot  about  this  case,  so  many  others  came  in.  The 
days  went  by  until  not  so  long  ago.  After  the  armistice 
was  signed  and  just  before  I  came  down  here,  some  one 
knocked  at  my  door.  There  came  in  a  smiling  yoimg 
woman,  neatly  dressed,  a  neatly  dressed  baby  in  her  arms. 
And  with  her  was  a  tall,  grinning,  brown-faced,  hard- 
bitten, well-set-up  young  man,  in  the  uniform  of  the  United 
States  Army.  He  had  a  sergeant's  chevrons  on  his  sleeve. 
I  did  not  know  any  of  these  people. 

"  'That's  Joe,'  said  the  young  woman.  Then  I  remem- 
bered it  all.  It  made  me  feel  rather  funny — I  couldn't 
really  quite  believe  it. 

"  'He  does  not  drink,'  said  the  wife.  'I  am  so  glad  he 
went  into  the  Army.' 

"Well,  maybe  you  think  I'm  not  glad  of  my  share  in 
remaking  a  man  like  that.  It  paid  me  for  all  my-  work 
and  worry  in  the  League.  I  believe  that  our  Division 
would  have  made  good  if  it  had  not  done  anything  more 
than  just  what  it  did  for  Joe." 

One  does  not  know  of  any  better  summary  of  the  slacker 
raids  than  that  conveyed  by  this  simple  little  story  from 
one  chief  out  of  very  many  hundreds. 


CHAPTER  XII 

SKULKER    CHASING 

Hunting  Bad  Men  —  Deserter-Catching  in  the  Southern 
Mountains  —  Tricks  of  the  Slacker's  Trade  —  Running 
Down  Unwilling  Patriots  —  Some  A.  P.  L.  Adventures  — 
Death  of  a  Deserter  —  How  a  Southern  Ranger  Brings 
Them  In. 

One  of  the  earliest  recollections  of  the  writer's  boyhood 
is  that  of  seeing  his  father  busily  engaged  in  molding  bul- 
lets for  his  rifle  on  a  certain  Sunday  morning — at  that  time 
the  old^muzzle-loading  rifle  was  still  in  use.  The  old  gen- 
tleman was  with  the  Army  Recruiting  Service  in  the  Civil 
War,  in  a  branch  which  at  times  was  obliged  to  look  after 
men  who  were  evading  the  draft  or  unduly  prolonging 
their  furloughs,  or  who  belonged  to  that  detested  group 
of  conscientious  objectors  and  obstructionists  who  at  that 
time  bore  the  local  name  of  ''Copperheads."  Some  of 
these  men  had  ambushed  and  killed  two  of  the  Army  men 
sent  out  to  bring  them  in,  and  as  others  of  the  force  then 
took  up  the  matter,  it  was  deemed  wise  to  be  alert  and 
well  armed.  The  murderers  were  duly  apprehended  and 
dealt  with. 

At  that  time  we  had  a  United  States  Secret  Service 
whose  annals  make  interesting  reading  to-day — as,  for  in- 
stance, the  burial  by  Secret  Service  men  of  the  body  of 
John  Wilkes  Booth,  the  assassin  of  President  Lincoln. 
That  final  resting  place  to  this  day  is  known  to  very  few 
men.  There  was,  however,  in  Civil  War  times  no  Military 
Intelligence  Division,  no  censorship  of  the  mails  or  cables, 
no  real  system  of  espionage,  and  certainly  no  A.  P.  L.  We 
had  less  need  then  tfian  now  for  such  extensions  of  the 
arm  of  Justice,  because  then  each  army  was  fighting  an 
honorable  foe — though  both  were  mistaken  foes — and  be- 
because  our  country  then  was  not  populated  so  largely  with 

148 


SKULKER  CHASING  149 

unassimilated  and  treacherous  foreigners.  There  was  some 
spy  work  in  that  time  on  both  sides,  as  in  any  war ;  but  for 
the  most  part,  clean,  straightaway  fighting  was  the  main 
concern  of  both  sides;  and  that  war  was  so  fought  that 
such  a  thing  as  honor  did  exist  and  could  survive  for  both 
combatants. 

The  Civil  War  had  as  one  of  its  worst  results  the  fact 
that  the  rich  new  West  and  Northwest,  then  opening  up 
with  the  early  railroads,  came  to  be  largely  settled  soon 
after  the  war  by  a  heavy  foreign  population,  instead  of  by 
young  Americans  who  must  otherwise  have  marched  out 
at  the  head  of  the  rails,  and  not  at  the  head  of  armies 
from  which  so  many  of  them  never  returned.  Had  there 
been  no  Civil  AVar,  there  would  have  been  less  of  loose 
immigration.  Without  that  war,  there  would  be  no  Non- 
partisan League  in  the  Northwest,  no  German  Alliance  in 
the  Middle  West,  no  Bolshevism  in  the  cities  of  the  East. 
Nevertheless,  even  in  that  day  of  honorable  warfare,  when 
men  met  foemen  worthy  of  their  steel  and  not  cowardly 
assassins,  there  existed  men  who  had  the  craven  heart. 
There  were  deserters  then  as  there  always  are  in  war, — 
and  sometimes  they  were  Sought  out  by  men  who  molded 
bullets  of  a  Sunday  morning,  and  who,  having  started  out 
after  their  men,  did  not  come  back  until  they  had  found 
them. 

To-day  also  we  have  deserters  and  slackers — let  us  say, 
perhaps,  with  better  color  of  excuse  than  in  the  old  days, 
because  in  some  of  the  more  remote  districts  of  the  United 
States,  far  from  the  confusion  of  the  crowded  city  life,  in 
sections  where  the  world  runs  smoothly  and  quietly  and 
men  are  content,  there  existed  no  definite  and  concrete 
local  reasons  for  a  man  to  go  to  war  with  a  foe  across  the 
sea  of  whom  he  knew  little  or  nothing.  Secure  in  the  only 
American  part  of  America,  sometimes  the  Southern  moun- 
taineers, for  instance,  resented  the  draft  because  they  did 
not  understand  it.  The  bravest  of  the  brave,  ready  to 
fight  at  the  drop  of  the  hat,  and  natural  soldiers,  there 
were  among  them  many  whose  fathers  joined  the  Federal 
Army  in  the  Civil  War.  They  volunteered  for  that — but 
they  would  not  be  drafted  for  this  foreign  war.  They 
made    a   brand   of   conscientious    objectors — rather,    say. 


150  THE  WEB 

ignorant  objectors — who  were  dangerous  to  go  up  against 
in  the  laurel  thickets  or  the  far-back  mountain  coves. 
Very  often,  these  men,  when  they  learned  how  the  flag  of 
this  country  had  been  insulted,  how  our  women  and  chil- 
dren had  been  murdered  on  the  sea,  were  eager  to  join  the 
colors,  and  never  again  were  they  deserters  or  slackers — 
only  fighting  men. 

To  this  form  of  military  evader  among  the  simple  out- 
lying people  of  the  southern  hills,  there  must  be  added  a 
great  many  deserters  of  foreign  descent  all  over  the  coun- 
try, caught  in  the  Selective  Service  Act.  Some  of  these 
had  imbibed  no  real  loyalty  to  America  in  their  home  asso- 
ciations ;  much  too  often  their  environments  were  those  of 
other  countries  and  not  this.  They  heard  another  speech 
than  ours  used  as  a  ''  mother  tongue  ";  daily  saw  customs 
of  the  old  world  maintained,  andj  not  those  of  the  new 
world  taken  on.  They  had  small  heart  for  the  war  because 
their  loyalty  to  this  country  still  was  crude  and  unformu- 
lated. Many  of  the  foreign-born  troops  who  fought  so  well 
in  France  first  joined  our  colors,  not  because  they  wished 
to,  but  because  they  had  to,  the  law  leaving  no  option. 
After  that,  they  learned  the  fierce  love  of  a  real  soldier 
for  the  real  flag  of  a  real  country.  Perhaps  their  wounds 
and  their  deaths  may  teach  their  surviving  relatives  in 
America  not  to  remain  foreigners,  but  to  become  Ameri- 
cans— and  not  foreigners  masquerading  as  Americans. 
Some  of  our  best  soldiers  had  fathers  who  had  taken  the 
German  oath  never  to  renounce  fealty  to  that  famous 
'*War  Lord,"  chief  est  coward  of  them  all,  who  had  not 
courage  to  die  at  the  head  of  his  army. 

There  was  also  in  this  war,  as  in  all  other  wars,  a  certain 
percentage  of  the  sullen  and  rebellious,  of  the  weak  and 
cowardly,  men  of  no  mark  and  no  convictions  in  any  cause, 
men  who  never  rise  above  themselves  and  their  selfish 
concerns  in  any  situation.  Beyond  these,  again,  was  a 
small  class  whose  natural  home  longings  or  home  bewail- 
ings  or  home  pleadings  led  them  to  desert.  Because  of 
many  reasons,  then,  a  certain  percentage  of  deserters 
marked  this  war  as  every  war. 

In  the  eyes  of  the  law  this  was  every  man's  war,  and 
all  must  get  under  and.  back  of  it  with  no  exceptions.    A 


SKULKER  CHASING  I5I 

deserter  was  a  deserter.  Some  were  dangerous  men,  and 
some  no  more  than  yellow  slackers.  We  could  not  in  these 
pages  give  a  great  many  instances  of  either  type.  One 
A.  P.  L.  report,  however,  that  comes  from  Birmingham, 
Alabama,  is  peculiar  in  that  it  gives  details  regarding  sev- 
eral investigations  and  arrests  of  deserters. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  cases  handled  by  the  Bir- 
mingham Division  was  that  of  Dan  D of  Tuscaloosa 

County,  who  deserted  from  the  regular  army  of  the  United 
States  on  November  27,  1917,  and  was  not  captured  until 
September  1,  1918.  Information  having  been  received  by 
the  Chief  on  the  23rd  of  August,  1918,  that  Dan  was  hiding 
near  Reno  Mines,  he  immediately  ordered  a  number  of  his 

men  under  Special  Agent  M to  go  after  the  deserter. 

The  trip  was  taken  in  automobiles  on  the  afternoon  of 
August  23,  and  through  very  heavy  mist.  Arriving  at 
Reno  Mines,  some  information  was  given  the  party  as  to 
the  location  of  the  man's  home,  which  proved  to  be  a  four- 
room  boxed  house  in  front  of  which  and  about  sixty  feet 
away  was  a  small  frame  barn  about  twenty  by  thirty  feet, 
built  of  rough  plank,  with  four  horse  stalls  in  the  main 
building  and  some  cow  stalls  in  the  lean-to  shed. 

A  careful  search  of  house  and  barn  failed  to  show  any 
signs  of  the  missing  man,  his  parents  and  sister  denying 
any  knowledge  of  his  whereabouts.  The  mother  said,  ''The 
last  I  hear'n  of  Dan  was  a  letter  from  Long  Island  two 
months  or  more  ago,**  and  she  remarked,  "Of  course, 
you  'uns  know  he  was  home  on  a  furlough  last  November." 
A  request  to  produce  the  letter  was  met  with  the  reply, 
"The  chillun  tore  it  up." 

The  search  of  the  barn  was  again  renewed  bv  the  men, 
and  the  loft  was  searched  with  the  aid  of  a  ladder  from  the 
outside.  It  was  found  to  be  fille<i  with  fodder,  hay  and 
grass,  and  prodding  with  poles  and  forks  convinced  the 
parties  that  there  was  no  chance  for  any  one  to  be  hiding 
under  same. 

Very  much  mystified,  and  yet  satisfied  by  the  demeanor 
and  sullen  manner  of  the  father,  mother  and  sister  that 
Dan  was  somewhere  close,  the  Special  Agent  divided  his 
men,  leaving  part  of  them  to  watch,  while  the  others 
sought  for  outside  information. 


152  THE  WEB 

Mr.  W ,  a  Deputy  Sheriff  of  Tuscaloosa  County, 

had  been  trying  to  locate  Dan  for  ten  months,  and  had 
watched  continuously  as  much  as  ten  days  at  one  time, 
both  house  and  barn.  A  number  of  searches  prior  to  the 
arrival  of  the  A.  P.  L.  squad,  made  in  and  around  the 
mines  of  the  different  operating  companies,  had  given  no 
clue.  One  thing  was  certain,  however:  nearly  everybody 
in  the  district  was  related  to  him,  due  to  the  intermarriage 
during  several  generations  of  the  people,  and,  as  usual, 
there  were  some  of  his  own  kin-folks  who  would  ''shore 
like  to  see  him  pulled. ' ' 

At  last,  the  patience  of  the  party  being  exhausted,  and 
feeling  sure  that  Dan  was  somewhere,  either  about  the 

house    or   barn,   the   father,    William   D ,    and   the 

mother,  and  a  sister,  who  had  denied  any  relationship  to 
Dan,  were  told  positively  either  to  surrender  him  or  go  to 
jail.  They  asked  for  time,  and  it  was  refused.  They 
pleaded  for  the  officers  to  come  again  to-morrow.  This 
also  was  refused.  After  pleading  again  to  give  them  till 
afternoon,  they  finally  asked  one  of  the  League  operators 
to  a  conference  behind  the  house  with  the  mother  and 
father.  They  then  renewed  their  pleadings  for  time,  but 
finally  agreed  to  show  the  hiding  place  of  their  son  and 
deliver  him  to  the  party,  as  they  now  realized  that  the 
''U.  S.  was  a  blame  sight  stronger  than  kin-folks  who  were 
liable  to  split  on  you  at  any  minute." 

The  father  was  then  accompanied  to  the  barn.  He 
knocked  on  the  wall  of  the  barn  and  said,  ''Come  down, 
son!"  Almost  immediately  a  wide  plank  in  the  floor  of 
the  barn  loft,  almost  over  the  heads  of  the  astonished  men, 
mysteriously  arose  from  its  resting  place,  revealing  the 
most  unique  and  simple  hiding  place  imaginable.  It  was 
nothing  more  or  less  than  a  box,  about  as  large  as  a 
good  sized  coffin,  in  which  there  were  bed  clothes,  food 
and  water.  The  box  was  cut  to  fit  the  joists,  hiding  all 
joints,  and  being  apparent  from  below  as  a  part  of  the 
loft  floor.  It  was  covered  with  fodder  and  hay  above,  the 
occupant  using  one  loose  plank  of  the  box  as  his  trap 
door.  When  occupied,  it  would  naturally  be  as  tight  as 
any  other  part  of  the  floor.  Later,  the  party  saw  a  hole 
dug  out  under  the  cow  stall  which  he  had  occupied  until 


SKULKER  CHASING  153 

his  more  palatial  quarters  in  the  coffin  box  had  been  pro- 
vided. 

The  District  was  noted  in  years  gone  by  as  the  *' favorite 
stamping  ground  of  Jim  Morrison  and  kindred  outlawed 
spirits."  Most  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  surrounding  coun- 
try are  employed  in  the  mining  of  brown  iron  ore,  which 
is  taken  out  of  large  open  cuts  and  washed  by  machinery 
and  shipped  to  the  furnaces  of  the  Birmingham  district. 
Nearly  all  of  the  labor,  black  and  white,  are  the  descend- 
ants of  small  farmers  of  Tuscaloosa  County  and  the  south- 
ern part  of  Jefferson  County.  Many  of  them  still  carry 
on  farming  in  a  small  way,  and  the  region  has  long  been 
famous  for  its  smooth  and  creamy  ''moonshine,"  which  in 
some  mysterious  way  still  continues  to  be  made.  It  was 
for  many  years  a  favorite  pastime  of  old  Judge  Shackel- 
ford, who  lived  and  died  in  sight  of  the  D home,  to 

mix  his  corn  juice  in  an  old  sugar  bowl  while  dispensing 
justice  in  the  good  old  way.  Shortly  after  the  events  nar- 
rated here,  the  sheriff  of  the  county  was  murdered  in  cold 
blood  on  the  village  street  by  one  of  the  outlaws  of  the 
section. 

Two  other  interesting  cases  handled  by  the  Birmingham 

Division  concerned  two  brothers,  S and  R . 

S deserted  from  Camp  Pike,  Arkansas,  October  5, 

1917,  and  R from  Camp  Mills,  N.  Y.,  September  25, 

1917.    The  peculiar  part  of  the  case  was  that  while  S 

was  listed  as  a  deserter,  the  War  Department  had  no  rec- 
ord of  R deserting,  though  they  were  advised  that 

he  was  in  this  section  of  the  country  and  efforts  were  made 
to  check  the  records.  While  their  desertions  took  place 
the  latter  part  of  1917,  it  was  not  until  August,  1918,  that 
Operative  No.  202  of  the  Birmingham  Division  received 
confidential  information  that  both  men  were  in  Shelby 
County,  Alabama,  making  moonshine  whiskey,  which  they 
were  selling  to  the  miners  and  also  to  citizens  in  Bessemer, 
Alabama,  a  town  thirteen  miles  southwest  of  Birmingham. 

A  party  was  organized  to  go  after  them,  but  unfortun- 
ately missed  them  by  four  days,  the  brothers  and  their 
family  having  moved  elsewhere.  Operative  continued  giv- 
ing the  case  active  attention,  and  finally  information  was 
secured  that  the  brothers  were  in  Coosa  County,  Alabama. 


154  THE  WEB 

Arrangements  for  automobiles  having  been  made  over  long 
distance,  a  party  of  A.  P.  L.  men,  six  in  number,  headed 
by  Agent  Crawford  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  left 
Birmingham  at  3  :50  P.  M.  Thursday,  November  7  (the  day 
made  famous  by  the  premature  Armistice  celebration), 
arriving  at  Goodwater  about  6 :00  P.  M. 

After  supper  they  were  met  by  two  100  per  cent  Ameri- 
can volunteers  with  automobiles,  and  were  driven  about 
five  miles  beyond  Goodwater.  The  latter  informed  them 
of  the  danger  of  arousing  these  parties  by  going  over  the 
regular  road,  on  account  of  dogs  barking,  so  they  left  the 
machines  about  two  miles  away  from  the  cabin  they  were 
seeking  and  detoured  over  a  large  hill,  in  the  dark  and 
cold,  to  get  to  the  cabin.    The  report  says : 

The  humorous  part  of  it  was  that,  in  spite  of  our  precau- 
tions, the  "  hound  dawgs "  treed  us  about  a  mile  from  the 
place  and  certainly  let  forth  unearthly  baying.  By  the  time 
we  reached  and  surrounded  the  cabin,  the  entire  household 
was  aroused.  Again  we  seemed  doomed  to  disappointment, 
for  we  were  informed  that  the  parties  we  sought  had  left  there 
just  four  days  before — the  same  length  of  time  by  which  we 
missed  them  in  Shelby  County. 

After  exploring  the  country  in  the  immediate  vicinity  we 
finally  secured  a  tip  that  the  brothers  were  near  another  town 
about  forty  miles  away,  so  we  regained  the  machines  and  re- 
turned to  Goodwater,  arriving  there  about  10:30  p.  m.  Feeling 
that  perhaps  some  word  might  reach  the  parties  that  we  were 
after  them,  if  we  postponed  the  trip,  our  drivers,  after  much 
discussion  finally  agreed  to  drive  us  to  Kellyton,  Alabama, 
about  ten  miles  from  Goodwater,  to  a  man  who  ran  a  jitney 
line.  It  was  the  coldest  night  of  the  year,  with  only  the  stars  ,, 
as  light.  Finally  we  reached  Kellyton,  shortly  after  midnight, 
and  while  two  of  us  were  arousing  the  jitney  man  the  others 
collected  leaves  and  firewood  and  in  a  few  minutes  had  a  roar- 
ing fire  by  the  roadside  to  warm  our  frozen  extremities. 

Until  we  acquainted  the  jitney  man  with  the  urgency  of  the 
matter,  he  demurred  about  getting  out  in  the  cold,  saying  he 
had  only  two  Ford  cars  and  would  have  to  depend  on  a  thir- 
teen-year-old son  to  drive  the  second  car  of  the  two.  He  was 
persuaded  to  take  us  over  the  thirty  miles  of  rough  country 
roads,  with  our  drivers  rather  uncertain  of  the  correct  route. 

We  reached  Wadley,  Alabama,  about  five  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing.    Some  coffee  filled  a  long-felt  want  and  in  a  few  minutes 


SKULKER  CHASING  155 

we  were  ready  again.  Further  investigation,  at  Abanda,  de- 
veloped the  fact  that  the  two  suspects  were  with  their  family, 
who  had  just  moved  in  a  country  house  about  a  mile  distant 
from  the  town.  This  house  was  in  a  hollow,  off  the  road,  well 
shielded  from  view,  and  the  surroundings  made  it  an  ideal 
place  for  those  seeking  seclusion.  Bearing  in  mind  the  fact 
that  in  the  rural  districts  most  every  one  is  suspicious  of 
strangers,  we  duly  surrounded  the  house  about  6:30  A.  M.  At 
a  signal  the  house  was  rushed  and  the  men  were  in  the  center 
passage  of  the  house  before  the  occupants  were  aware  of  their 
presence.  Hearing  the  noise,  the  mother  opened  the  door  to 
one  of  the  rooms  and  looked  out.  Seeing  these  strange  men, 
she  tried  to  close  the  door,  but  was  prevented  from  doing  so 
by  one  of  the  men  who  stuck  his  foot  in  the  opening.  On 
being  questioned  the  mother  denied  that  the  boys  were  there. 

The  house  was  the  usual  country  cabin,  with  rooms  on  each 
side  and  a  hall  down  the  middle,  so  while  the  two  members 
were  forcing  the  door  where  the  mother  was.  Agent  Crawford 
broke  in  the  door  across  the  hall  and  discovered  the  two 
brothers  on  pallets  on  the  floor.  They  were  promptly  covered 
before  they  had  a  chance  to  use  their  pump  gims,  though 
search  revealed  three  of  the  guns  fully  loaded  and  placed  for 
convenient  use.  Also,  an  extra  box  of  cartridges  was  found 
with  the  top  off.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  quickness  with  which 
we  worked,  trouble  would  doubtless  have  ensued,  as  the  repu- 
tation of  these  men  was  that  they  shot  first  and  asked  ques- 
tions afterward.  One  member  of  the  family  had  the  reputation 
of  killing  at  least  two  men  and  had  they  been  given  a  chance 
they  would  have  resisted. 

The  boys  were  ordered  to  dress  and  placed  under  arrest. 
Both  of  these  men  were  big,  strapping  fellows,  weighing  about 
175  pounds  apiece,  and  each  of  them  six  feet  tall.  They  had 
no  dependents,  so  there  was  absolutely  no  excuse  for  their 
failure  to  serve  their  country.  It  usually  Is  the  case  in  the 
rural  districts  of  the  South  that  nearly  everyone  is  related  to 
everybody  else,  and  all  are  "quick  on  the  trigger"  if  they  think 
their  relatives  are  being  sought.  It  is  interesting  to  mention 
that  the  house  where  we  captured  the  brothers  had  new  barbed 
wire  fencing  almost  completely  surrounding  it,  as  If  they  ex- 
pected a  little  trench  warfare  of  their  own.  Though  we  have 
handled  numerous  other  cases,  I  believe  the  circumstances 
surrounding  this  particular  one  will  long  linger  in  the  mem- 
ory of  those  composing  the  party. 

The  Local  Agent  of  the  Department  of  Justice  at  Bir- 
mingham had  many  times  received  information  that  there 


156  THE  WEB 

were  a  number  of  deserters  and  delinquents  in  the  swamps 
of  Pickens  County,  Alabama.  The  local  office  there  being 
unable  to  cope  with  the  situation,  on  Monday,  December 

10,  a  D.  J.  man,  Robert  B ,  went  to  Gordo  to  secure 

information  as  to  the  location  of  these  men.  The  informa- 
tion was  secured.  Mr.  B then  proceeded  to  Tusca- 
loosa where  he  called  the  Special  Agent  over  long  distance 
phone  asking  that  eight  A.  P.  L.  men  be  sent  to  join  him 
in  Tuscaloosa.  Eight  pickedj  men  of  the  A.  P.  L.  assembled, 
and  with  three  high  power  automobiles,  left  Birmingham 
at  9  :00  A.  M.,  December  11,  arriving  in  Tuscaloosa  at  noon. 
At  four  o'clock  the  party  left  Tuscaloosa,  going  to  a  point 

two  miles  from  Gordo  where  deputy  sheriff  D met 

the  party.  D was  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  sur- 
rounding country. 

Leaving  the  automobiles  about  two  miles  from  the  first 
house  that  was  to  be  covered,  the  party  very  quietly  sur- 
rounded the  house,  not  overlooking  the  barn  and  out 
houses.  They  had  been  informed  that  the  alleged  deserter 
had  been  staying  at  this  house,  the  owner  being  his  step 
father.  The  whole  place  was  searched,  no  evidence  being 
found'.  The  step  father  and  young  brother  were  put  under 
arrest.  This,  however,  failed  to  accomplish  the  desired 
result.  The  mother  was  in  her  bed,  an  old-time,  worn-out 
umbrella  beside  her.  Before  the  Assistant  Chief  could 
catch  her  hand,  a  heavy  blow  was  accurately  placed  on  his 
head,  the  old  lady  remarking,  *'I  am  damn  tired  of  all  this 
foolishness ! ' '  She  was  gently  relieved  of  the  umbrella  and 
convinced  that  the  bed  was  the  place  for  her. 

A  younger  daughter,  about  the  age  of  fifteen,  left  the 
house  at  this  time  by  a  back  entrance  and  ran  a  mile  to 
another  step  brother's  house,  with  the  evident  intention  of 
notifying  her  step  brother  who  was  wanted.  This  was  the 
undoing  of  the  A.  P.  L.,  as  far  as  this  deserter  Avas  con- 
cerned. Another  step  brother  of  the  deserter,  however, 
was  placed  under  arrest,  handcuffed  and  brought  to  jail 
for  harboring  a  deserter.  Operatives  discovered  notices 
that  had  been  put  on  different  houses  in  the  locality  of 
this  deserter,  one  of  them  reading:  "You  are  talking  too 
damn  much.  The  first  thing  you  know  the  sun  will  rise 
under  your  house." 


SKULKER  CHASING  I57 

The  party  then  proceeded  to  the  house  of  another  de- 
serter. The  house  as  usual  was  surrounded.  One  of  the 
operatives  discovered  an  open  window  with  a  blind,  the 
window  being  about  two  feet  square.    While  a  search  light 

and  a  good  gun  guarded  the  entrance,  Agent  B and 

an  A.  P.  L.  operative  crawled  through  this  opening  in  the 
room.  After  awakening  the  occupants,  a  deserter  and  the 
mother  of  another  deserter  were  found.  The  deserter  was 
forced  to  dress.  The  mother  was  closely  questioned  re- 
garding her  son,  and  finally  agreed  that  if  she  would  be 
allowed  to  go  alone,  she  would  bring  him  to  us.  This  was 
agreed  to.  She  w^as  watched  and  in  about  fifteen  minutes 
she  brought  her  son,  who  was  a  deserter,  and  also  her  hus- 
band. It  was  discovered  that  the  son  and  father  were 
sleeping  in  a  ditch  about  one  hundred  yards  from  the 
house.  They  had  bed  clothing,  and  slept  in  the  open  air 
with  the  sky  for  a  roof.  These  two  also  were  handcuffed 
and  brought  to  jail. 

The  most  interesting  case  on  this  trip  w^as  the  capture 
of  another  deserter  who  had  been  away  from  camp  for 
over  a  year.  He  and  his  wdfe,  it  is  alleged,  had  sworn 
that  he  would  never  be  taken  alive.  The  information  was 
that  they  had  bought  a  lot  in  the  community  cemetery 
where  they  were  to  be  buried  together.  Arriving  at  the 
house  of  the  deserter  at  2 :15  A.  M.,  the  house  was  covered 
and  each  operative  given  detailed  instructions.  The  de- 
serter was  called  to  the  open  door,  and  was  warned  not  to 
offer  resistance,  as  his  house  was  fully  surrounded.  When 
told  he  was  wanted  by  Uncle  Sam's  men,  he  opened  his 
door  and  offered  no  resistance,  stating  that  he  had  made 
up  his  mind  to  surrender  to  government  officers,  but  not 
to  the  local  officers.  Judging  from  the  weapons  that  he 
had  by  his  bed,  he  evidently  meant  w^hat  he  had  said.  He 
too  was  handcuffed  and  brought  to  jail.  The  total  mileage 
of  this  trip  was  two  hundred  and  sixteen  miles,  all  without 
a  scratch  to  car  or  man. 

Lexington,  North  Carolina,  was  in  this  same  mountain 
country  which  furnished  so  considerable  a  number  of  de- 
serters during  the  war.  It  is  a  strange  thing  to  say,  but 
perhaps  the  largest  numbers  of  deserters  were  found  in  the 
most  American  and  most  loyal  part  of  the  country — that 


158  THE  WEB 

is  to  say,  the  South,  where  there  was  almost  no  alien  popu- 
lation. The  only  pure-bred  American  population  in  the 
United  States  was  the  very  element  which  seemed  unwill- 
ing to  support  the  war!  This,  however,  is  a  statement 
which  needs  full  explanation.  Let  the  Chief  of  Lexington 
make  that  explanation  in  the  story  of  one  case . 

Tom  B was  a  Tar-Heel  tie  hacker  and  lived  in  the 

mountains  of  North  Carolina,  twenty-six  miles  from  a  rail- 
road. He  could  neither  read  nor  write,  but  was  straight  and 
strong,  and  to  see  him  swing  a  broad-axe  was  worth  a  trip 
into  the  mountains.  When  Tom  heard  of  the  draft  he  did 
not  understand  it.  He  had  led  a  life  of  peaceful  seclusion. 
There  were  two  old  Germans  over  at  the  railroad  that  ran 
a  store,  but  Tom  could  work  up  no  enthusiasm  about  crossing 
the  Atlantic  to  kill  people  of  that  sort.  But  the  draft  came 
and  many  of  Tom's  meantime  friends  disappeared.  It 
seemed  inexplicable  to  him.  He  did  not  want  to  go  to  war 
with  anybody  and  did  not  understand  why  there  was  any 
war.     The  solution  of  his  problem  at  last  came  to  him. 

His  people  had  come  to  these  mountain  fastnesses  because 
there  they  found  that  liberty  of  thought  and  action  which 
all  our  early  Americans  longed  for ;  but  now  into  that  free- 
dom of  action  there  came  some  intangible  influence  which 
he  could  not  understand.  Tom  simply  resolved  to  march 
into  the  forest  as  his  great-grandfather  had  done.  He 
''  stepped  back  into  the  brush  "  for  the  duration  of  the  war. 
For  him  this  was  the  only  natural  solution  for  a  problem  he 
did  not  understand.  In  this  way  he  could  escape  what 
seemed  to  him  oppression  and  impairment  of  th-e  liberty 
which  he  held  more  dear  than  life.  So  he  made  the  usual 
arrangements.  Food  would  be  left  for  him  at  a  certain  spot 
by  his  people.  If  anyone  came  in  looking  for  Tom,  his 
people  would  put  up  a  smoke  signal  so  he  would  understand. 
Meantime,  Tom  continued  his  work  in  a  tie  camp,  his  squirrel 
rifle  leaning  against  a  tree.  When  he  finished  his  work,  he 
''stepped  back"  into  deep  laurel  and  was  lost  as  though  he 
had  gone  up  into  smoke.  His  decision,  having  been  taken, 
would  remain  unshakable  ev*n  unto  death.  He  said,  *'I 
reckon  I  made  up  my  mind,  and  I  'd  ruther  die  here  than  in 
Germany." 

Let  us  consider  ths  situation.    Here  is  Tom  B ,  an 


SKULKER  CHASING  159 

American  of  native  blood,  afraid  of  nothing  that  rides,  walks 
or  swims,  willing  to  fight  his  weight  in  wildcats  to  defend 
the  freedom  and  libert}^  of  his  native  hills  —  and  he  is  a 
fugitive  from  justice.  Now,  how  can  the  A.  P.  L.  save  that 
man  from  the  consequence  of  his  folly  ? 

He   was   saved.     As   soon   as   the    Chief   heard   of  Tom 

B 's  disappearance,  he  packed  his  timber  cruising  kit 

and  went  out  into  Tom's  country.  At  night  he  reached  the 
cabin  of  Uncle  John  Coggins,  who  knew  everybody  in  that 
neck  of  the  woods  and  whose  word  was  law.  Uncle  John 
knew  what  was  up,  but  he  said  nothing  —  only  kept  his  small 
blue  eyes  fixed  on  the  visitor.  After  they  had  finished  their 
meal,  the  two  went  out  and  sat  on  a  log  in  the  sun,  in  the 
middle  of  a  clearing  where  no  one  could  approach  without 
being  seen  in  time. 

' '  I  understand, ' '  remarked  the  Chief  casually,  * '  that  Tom 
has  stepped  back  into  the  brush." 

No  sign  from  Uncle  John  that  he  had  heard  anything. 
Tom's  name  was  not  mentioned  again. 

Then  the  talk  was  shifted  to  the  war  and  other  things. 
The  chief  tried  to  explain  to  Uncle  John  the  problem  of 
raising  the  army.  He  tried  to  bring  home  the  war,  across 
the  thousands  of  miles  of  sea  and  land,  to  this  old  man  sit- 
ting on  a  log  in  the  western  North  Carolina  mountains.  He 
pointed  out  the  purpose  and  the  manifest  fairness  of  selective 
sersnce,  taking  all  alike  from  all  ranks. 

Then  they  talked  about  the  weather  and  the  crops  and 
the  soaring  price  of  corn  ' '  likker  ' '  and  the  growing  scarcity 
of  good  white  oak  timber.  The  Chief  went  away.  Uncle 
John,  when  he  said  good-bye,  understood  perfectly  why  the 
visitor  had  come  to  his  cabin. 

Several  days  later  Uncle  John  appeared  in  the  office  of 
the  Chief.  He  drew  up  a  chair  and  remarked,  "  Howdy," 
and  sat  gazing  at  the  other  man  with  about  as  much  anima- 
tion as  an  Egyptian  mummy.  Only  his  little  snappy  eyes 
under  the  bushy  brows  told  of,  his  alertness.  The  conver- 
sation was  again  about  the  weather,  the  crops,  the  soaring 
price  of  corn  '^  likker  "  and  the  growing  scarcity  of  good 
white  oak  timber.  At  length  Uncle  John  hitched  his  chair 
closer. 

'*  I  kinda  tho't  you  all  mought  wanter  know  'bout  Tom 


160  THE  WEB 

-/'  he  said.     ''IVe  done  been  out  whar  Tom  is 


a-settin'  back,  an'  he  seed  how  hit  is — an'  he's  a-comin'  in !  " 
The  Chief  of  the  A.  P.  L.  nodded.  The  thing  was  settled. 
They  smoked  for  a  time,  discussed  the  weather,  the  crops, 
the  soaring  price  of  corn  ^ '  likker  ' '  and  the  growing  scarcity 
of  good  white  oak  timber.  Tom's  name  was  not  mentioned 
again.  The  Chief  spoke  quite  casually  of  a  few  details  that 
would  naturally  attend  Tom's  "  comin'  in."  Uncle  John 
said  he  would  attend  to  those  matters.    A  little  later  he  went 

away.    And  by  and  by  Tom  B came  in  and  joined  the 

Army. 

These  Southern  leaders  understood  the  mountain  people. 
Their  method  of  work  was  infinitely  more  simple  than 
sending  a  posse  out  into  the  brush  to  round  up  a  desperate 
man  who  Imew  how  to  shoot  to  kill.  There  were  charac- 
ters who  nec'ded  other  methods;  but  among  the  boys  in 
the  mountains,  ignorance  and  aloofness  were  the  common 
causes  of  their  *' stepping  back  into  the  brush."  To  have 
called  any  one  of  them  afraid  to  fight  would  have  been 
the  deepest  insult  possible  to  men  of  their  race.  Once  in 
the  army,  they  did  fight — the  records  of  the  Army  will 
speak  as  to  that.  There  never  were  better  or  braver  sol- 
diers in  the  world,  nor  men  more  loyal  and  devoted  to  their 
country. 

Olympia,  Washington,  had  an  interesting  case  of  a  de- 
serter named  G ,  whose  father  made  the  statement 

that  anyone  who  took  the  boy  would  have  to  come  shoot- 
ing. The  house  was  searched  but  the  boy  was  gone.  The 
A.  P.  L.  operative  later  became  a  game  warden,  and  while 
traveling  in  the  country  ran  across  an  empty  cabin.  As 
it  was  known  that  the  boy's  father  had  taken  out  a  trap- 
per's license,  they  thought  that  perhaps  this  cabin  might 
be  occupied  by  the  deserter.  It  was  in  a  swamp,  built 
under  overhanging  trees,  so  it  was  almost  impossible  to 
find.  There  was  no  trail  to  the  cabin,  as  the  boy  did  not 
go  in  and  out  in  any  regular  w^ay  but  took  different  paths 
to  avoid  discovery.     The  operative  and  an  associate  went 

into  the  woods,  found  G 's  line  of  traps,  followed 

them  up  and  captured  him  in  the  woods.  This  deserter's 
family  would  not  buy  Liberty  bonds  but  said  they  would 
save  their  money  for  ammunition.    The  prompt  and  vigor- 


SKULKER  CHASING  161 

ous  action  of  A.  P.  L.  closed  a  case  whicli  was  notorious 
in  the  vicinity. 

.  A  study  of  the  reports  of  operatives  engaged  in  League 
activities  at  the  busy  Birmingham  Division,  and  indeed  all 
over  the  country,  shows  an  astonishing  lack  of  anything 
like  personal  violence.  It  never  could  be  told,  however, 
where  such  an  instance  might  break  out.  Only  two  or 
three  cases  of  killing  in  the  course  of  duty  are  recorded 
in  the  thousands  of  cases  handled.  One  of  these  comes 
from  a  quiet  little  farming  village,  Morris,  Illinois,  about 
the  last  place  in  the  world  where  anything  of  the  sort 
might  have  been  expected.  It  resulted  in  the  shooting 
down,   in   the   uniform   of   our  Army,   of  Private   A.   J. 

K ,   Company  D.,  U.   S.   Infantry,  a  deserter  from 

Rock  Island  arsenal.  K had  escaped  from  confine- 
ment at  Rock  Island  with  Corporal  George  S .  Act- 
ing Sheriff  S ,  who  also  was  Chief  of  the  A.  P.  L. 

at  Morris,  accompanied  by  Chief  of  Police  A ,  had 

been  advised  to  be  on  the  lookout  for  two  deserters  who 
were  reported  to  be  bad  men. 

The  two  men  were  on  top  of  a  box  car  when  a  train 
pulled  into  town,  and  were  accosted  by  the  Sheriff.  They 
claimed  to  be  government  guards,  and  were  asked  to  show 

their  papers.     A  weapon  was  seen  in  S 's  pocket. 

The  other  man,  still  on  the  top  of  the  car,  covered  the 
two  peace  officers  and  ordered  them  to  keep  away  or  he 
would  shoot.  At  last  the  Sheriff  managed  to  get  the  drop 
on  him  before  he  fired,  but  meantime  the  train  began  to 
pull  out,  so  no  shooting  ensued  at  that  time. 

Morris  wired  Joliet  to  arrest  the  soldiers  when  the  train 
got  in.  The  man  hunt  now  was  on,  because  other  officers 
down  the  valley  reported  the  men  wanted  for  desertion. 
The  two  fugitives  left  the  train  at  Durkee's  Crossing  and 
hid  in  the  woods  near  the  tracks.  The  Sheriff  got  a  posse 
and  following  down  the  track,  located  the  men  and  sur- 
rounded the  wood  where  they  were  concealed.     The  chief 

got  up  to  S unnoticed,  covered  him  with  a  rifle  and 

told  him  to  come  along,  which  he  did.  He  then  asked 
S where  the  other  man  was. 

Just  then,  K ,  who  had  not  been  -seen,  called'  to 

the  officer  to  drop  the   gun  or  he  would  shoot.     Some 


162,  THE  WEB 

threatening  talk  ensued  on  both  sides  and  K ad- 
vanced, the  officer  still  commanding  him  to  drop  his  gun 

as  he  was  under  arrest.    K ,  in  turn,  demanded  that 

the  chief  should  drop  his  rifle,  holding  him  covered  fair  all 
the  time.  The  Chief  then  called  for  his  men  to  fire.  Patrol- 
man Wm.  M fired  on  K with  his  rifle,  and 

K dropped.     He  did  not  die  immediately,  and  was 

taken  to  the  hospital  in  Morris  that  night.  The  patrol- 
man's bullet  passed  through  his  left  shoulder,  cut  through 

the  lung,  and  lodged  near  the  heart.    K refused  to 

talk.     His  companion  talked  more  freely,  and  said  that 

K was  bad  and  had  had  a.  shooting  difficulty  in 

West  Virginia.  They  had  both  been  in  confinement,  and 
had  escaped  with  the  intention  of  going  back  to  West 

Virginia.    He  said  that  K 'Svas  the  best  shot  in  the 

regiment,  and  was  a  'killer.'  "  That  the  A.  P.  L.  Chief 
was  not  himself  killed  is  nothing  less  than  a  marvel. 


y 


CHAPTER  XIII 

AKTS   OF   THE   OPERATIVES 

The  Midnight  Camera  —  The  Way  of  a  Man  and  a  Maid 
and  a  Dictagraph  —  Secret  Inks  and  Codes  —  Stories  of 
the  Trail  —  How  Evidence  Was  Secured. 

It  already  has  been  stated  that  the  American  Protective 
League  had  no  governmental  or  legal  status,  though  strong 
as  Gibraltar  in  governmental  and  legal  sanction.  The  mails 
are  supposed  to  be  sacred — the  Postmaster  General  has 
sworn  they  always  shall  be  sacred.  They  are  sacred.  But 
let  us  call  the  A.  P.  L.  sometimes  almost  clairvoyant  as 
to  letters  done  by  suspects.  Sometimes  it  clairvoyantly 
found  the  proofs  it  sought! 

It  is  supposed  that  breaking  and  entering  a  man's  home 
or  office  place  without  warrant  is  burglary.  Granted.  But 
the  League  has  done  that  thousands  of  times  and  has  never 
been  detected !  It  is  entirely  naive  and  frank  about  that. 
It  did  not  harm  or  unsettle  any  innocent  man.  It  was  after 
the  guilty  alone,  and  it  was  no  time  to  mince  matters  or 
to  pass  fine  phrases  when  the  land  was  full  of  dangerous 
enemies  in  disguise.  The  League  broke  some  little  laws 
and  precedents?  Perhaps.  But  it  upheld  the  great  law 
under  the  great  need  of  an  unprecedented  hour. 

A  man's  private  correspondence  is  supposed  to  be  safe 
in  his  office  files  or  vault.  You  suppose  yours  never  was 
seen?  Was  it?  Perhaps.  It  certainly  was,  if  you  w^ere 
known  as  a  loyal  citizen — a  true-blood  American.  But  the 
League  examined  all  of  the  personal  and  business  corre- 
spondence of  thousands  of  men  who  never  were  the  wiser. 

How  could  that  be  done  ?  Simply,  as  we  shall  see.  Sup- 
pose there  was  a  man,  ostensibly  a  good  business  man,  appar- 
ently a  good  citizen  and  a  good  American,  but  who  at  heart 
still  was  a  good  German — as  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
such  men  living  in  America  are  this  very  day.     This  man 

163 


164  THE  WEB 

has  a  big  office  in  a  down-town  skyscraper.  He  is  what 
the  A.  P.  L.  calls  a  ''suspect."  Let  us  call  him  Bieder- 
macher. 

About  midnight  or  later,  after  all  the  tenants  have  gone 
home,  you  and  I,  who  chance  to  be  lieutenants  and  oper- 
atives in  the  League,  just  chance  in  at  the  corridor  of  that 
building  as  we  pass.  We  just  chance  to  find  there  tl^e 
agent  of  the  building — who  just  chances  also  to  wear  the 
concealed  badge  of  the  A.  P.  L.  You  say  to  the  agent  of 
the  building,  ''I  want  to  go  through  the  papers  of  Bieder- 
macher.  Room  1117,  in  your  building." 

''John,"  the  agent  says  to  the  janitor,  *'give  me  your 
keys,  I've  forgotten  mine,  and  I  want  to  go  to  my  office 
a  while  with  these  gentlemen." 

We  three,  openly,  in  fact,  do  go  to  Biedermacher's  office. 
His  'desk  is  opened,  his  vault  if  need  be  —  it  has  been  done 
a  thousand  times  m  every  city  of  America.  Certain  letters 
or  documents  are  found.  They  would  be  missed  if  taken 
away.    What  shall  be  done? 

The  operative  takes  from  his  pocket  a  curious  little  box- 
like instrument  which  he  sets  up  on  the  table.  He  unscrews 
a  light  bulb,  screws  in  the  plug  at  the  end  of  his  long 
insulated  w4re.  He  has  a  perfectly  effective  electric  cam- 
era. 

One  by  one  the  essential  papers  of  Biedermacher  are 
photographed,  page  by  page,  and  then  returned  to  the 
files  exactly  —  and  that  means  exactly  —  in  the  place  from 
which  each  was  taken.  The  drawers  and  doors  are  locked 
again.  Search  has  been  made  witliout  a  searcli  warrant. 
The  serving  of  a  search  warrant  would  have  "  queered  " 
the  whole  case  and  would  not  have  got  the  evidence.  The 
camera  film  has  it  safe. 

"  Pretty  wife  and  kids  the  fellow  has,"  says  the  agent 
of  the  building,  turning  over  the  photographs  which  the 
simple  and  kindly  Biedermacher,  respected  Board  of  Trade 
broker,  we  will  say,  has  in  his  desk.  He  turns  them  back 
again  to  exactly  —  exactly  —  the  same  position. 

"  Good  night,  John,"  he  yawns  to  the  janitor,  when 
they  meet  him  on  the  floor  below.    "  Pretty  late,  isn't  it?  " 

The  three  men  pass  out  to  the  street  and  go  home. 
Each  of  them  in  joining  the  League  has  sworn  to  break 


ARTS  OF  THE  OPERATIVES  165 

any  social  engagement  to  obey  a  call  from  the  League 
headquarters  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night.  Perhaps 
such  engagements  have  been  broken  to-night  by  some  or 
all  of  these  three  men.  But  no  one  has  ''  broken  and 
entered"  Biedermacher's  office. 

In  Central  office  some  data  are  added  to  a  card,  cross- 
indexed  by  name  and  number  also,  and  under  a  general 
guide.  Some  photostats,  as  these  pictures  are  called,  are 
put  in  the  *'  case's  "  envelope.  Nothing  happens  just  yet. 
Biedermacher  still  is  watched. 

Then,  one  morning,  an  officer  of  the  Department  of  Jus- 
tice finds  Mr.  Biedermacher  in  his  office.  He  takes  from 
his  pocket  a  folded  paper  and  says,  **  In  the  name  of  the 
United  States,  I  demand  possession  of  a  letter  dated  the 
12th  of  last  month,  which  you  wrote  to  von  Bernstorff  in 
New  York.  I  want  a  letter  of  the  15th  of  tl;is  month  which 
you  wrote  to  von  Papen  in  Berlin.  I  want  your  list  of 
the  names  of  the  United  Sangerbund  and  German  Brother- 
hood in  America  which  you  brought  home  from  the  last 
meeting.  I  want  the  papers  showing  the  sums  you  have 
received  from  New  York  and  Washington  for  your  pro- 
paganda work  here  in  this  city.  I  want  the  letter  received 
by  you  from  seven  Lutheran  ministers  in  AVisconsin  tell- 
ing of  their  future  addresses  to  the  faithful." 

*'  But,  my  God!  "  says  Biedermacher,  '*  what  do  you 
mean?  I  have  no  such  letters  here  or  anywhere  else.  I 
am  innocent!  I  am  as  good  an  American  as  you  are.  I 
have  bought  a  hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  Liberty 
bonds,  some  of  each  issue.  My  wife  is  in  the  Red  Cross. 
I  have  a  daughter  in  Y.  W.  C.  A.  I  give  to  all  the  war 
charities.  I  am  an  American  citizen.  What  do  you  mean 
by  insulting  me,  sir?  " 

'*  John,"  says  the  officer  to  his  drayman,  ''go  to  that 
desk.  Take  out  all  the  papers  in  it.  Here's  the  U.  S. 
warrant,  Mr.  Biedermacher.     Rope  'em  up,  John.'* 

John  ropes  up  the  files,  and  the  papers  go  in  bulk  to 
the  office  of  the  U.  S.  attorney  on  the  case.  Now,  all  the 
evidence  is  in  possession  of  the  Government,  and  the  case 
is  clear.  Biedermacher  is  met  quietly  at  the  train  when 
he  tries  to  get  out  of  town.  Nothing  gets  into  the  papers. 
No  one  talks  —  secrecy  is  the  oath.    But  before  long,  the 


166  THE  WEB 

big  Biedermacher  offices  are  closed.  Biedermacher's  wife 
says  her  husband  has  gone  south  for  his  health.  He  has 
—  to  Oglethorpe. 

You  think  this  case  imaginary,  far-fetched,  impossible? 
It  is  neither  of  the  three.  It  is  the  truth.  It  shows  how 
D.  J.  and  A.  P.  L.  worked  together.  This  is  a  case  which 
has  happened  not  once  but  scores  and  hundreds  of  times. 
It  is  espionage,  it  is  spy  work,  yes,  and  it  has  gone  on  to 
an  extent  of  which  the  average  American  citizen,  loyal  or 
disloyal,  has  had  no  conception.  It  was,  however,  the 
espionage  of  a  national  self-defense.  It  was  only  in  this 
way  that  the  office  and  the  mail  and  the  home  of  the  loyal 
citizen  could  be  held  inviolate.  The  web  of  the  A.  P.  L. 
was  precisely  that  of  the  submarine  net.  Invisible,  it 
offered  an  apparently  frail  but  actually  efficient  defense 
against  the  dastardly  weapons  of  Germany. 

It  must  become  plain  at  once  that  secret  work  such  as 
this,  carried  on  in  such  volume  all  across  the  country  — 
three  million  cases,  involving  an  enormous  mass  of  detail 
and  an  untold  expenditure  of  time  and  energy,  were  dis- 
posed of  —  meant  system  and  organization  to  prevent  over- 
lapping of  work  and  consequent  waste  of  time.  It  meant 
more  than  that  —  there  was  needed  also  good  judgment, 
individual  shrewdness  and  of  course,  above  all  things,  pa- 
tience and  hard  work. 

For  instance,  John  Wielawski  is  a  deserter  reported  to 
National  Headquarters  missing  from  Camp  Grant,  Illinois, 
possibly  hiding  in  Chicago.  The  order  goes  to  the  Chief 
in  Chicago,  who  hands  it  to  the  right  district  lieutenant. 
The  latter  finds  in  his  cards  the  name  of  an  operative  who 
speaks  Wielawski 's  native  tongue.  The  latter  goes  to  the 
neighborhood  where  Wielawski  lived,  inquires  especially 
in  regard  to  any  sweetheart  or  sweethearts  Wielawski  may 
have  had.  It  is  certain  he  left  some  ties  somewhere,  that 
he  has  been  seen,  that  he  has  written  at  least  a  line,  or 
will  write.  His  running  down  is  sure.  The  League  has 
found  thousands  of  deserters,  located  thousands  of  men 
Avho  had  refused  to  take  out  their  second  naturalization 
papers,  thousands  who  were  skulkers  and  draft  evaders. 
They  could  not  escape  the  Web  which  reached  all  across 
America,  unseen,  but  deadly  sure. 


ARTS  OF  THE  OPERATIVES  167 

The  great  average  intelligence  of  the  League  members 
alone  made  the  extraordinary  results  possible.  These  were 
no  ordinary  hired  sleuths  of  the  mysterious  detective  type, 
gum-shoe  artists  with  a  bent  for  masks  and  false  eyebrows. 
On  the  contrary,  the  officers  and  operatives  were  men  of 
standing,  of  great  personal  intelligence  and  sober  good 
sense.  They  dropped  their  private  affairs,  in  which  they 
had  been  successful,  to  obey  the  League  call  at  any  time. 
They  studied  their  new  duties  regularly  and  faithfully, 
as  best  they  could  —  and  they  learned  them. 

The  methods  of  such  men  varied  widely.  They  had 
attended  no  outside  school,  had  no  special  governmental 
training.  Their  success  depended  on  the  natural  alertness 
of  the  American  character.  For  instance,  one  gentleman 
prominent  in  the  work,  we  will  say  in  New  York,  was 
sent  after  a  draft  evader  whose  name,  racially  considered, 
did  not  tally  with  his  personal  description.  The  operative 
found  his  case  originated  in  a  foreign  part  of  the  city.  His 
man  had  originally  lived  in  a  certain  flat.  Some  boys 
played  ball  near  by.  The  operative  strolled  by  to  w^atch, 
engaged  two  or  three  in  conversation.  Yes,  a  dark  man 
—  some  said  he  was  a  Turk  —  had  lived  there.  He  had 
moved,  they  -didn't  know  where.  He  used  to  work  in  a 
laundry,  they  thought.  Very  well,  a  Turk  and  a  laundry- 
man  would  naturally  be  found  in  some  other  laundry,  pos- 
sibly near  his  own  people.  The  case  was  carried  on  until, 
in  a  laundry  in  another  part  of  the  same  city,  a  new  man 
was  found  —  he  had  a  new  name,  but  the  same  face. 
Eventually  he  was  put  where  he  belonged. 

The  psalmist  of  old  voiced  his  complaint  that  there  were 
three  things  in  the  world  which  he  did  not  know,  three 
things  which  he  could  not  find  out :  the  way  of  a  ship 
upon  the  sea,  the  way  of  the  serpent  on  a  rock,  andj  the 
way  of  a  man  with  a  maid.  The  trouble  with  Solomon 
was  that  he  seems  not  to  have  owned  either  a  geometry, 
a  microscope  or  a  dictagraph.  These  used  respectively  in 
connection  with  the  problems  described  above  might  have 
helped  him  out  considerably. 

A.  P.  L.  operatives  at  Nyack,  New  York,  had  Solomon 
beaten  by  a  city  block.  They  installed  a  dictagraph  in  a 
room  frequented  by  one  A.  L ,  who  was  impersonat- 


168  THE  WEB 

ing  an  officer,  declaring  that  he  was  **  Chief  of  the  Secret 
Service  from  New  York  to  Boston."  His  game  was  to 
advertise  for  women  to  engage  in  espionage  work,  saying 
that  the  Government  would  pay  a  big  price  and  would 
also  buy  clothes  and  hats  for  the  operatives  and  put  them 
up  at  the  best  hotels.    It  was  suspectedj  very  keenly  that 

Mr.  A.  L was  neither  employed  by  the  Government 

nor  acting  as  an  officer  and  a  gentleman  ought  to  act.  He 
did  not  know  anything  about  the  deadly  dictagraph  which 
A,  P.  L.  had  placed  in  this  apartment.  Hence,  he  con- 
versed quite  freely  with  a  certain  Mrs.  U ,  who  had 

answered  his  advertisement  and  at  whose  apartment  he  was 
paying  a  call.  They  seem  first  to  have  talked  about  the 
apartment  itself,  the  conversation  going  as  follows: 

Mrs.  v.:  Isn't  it  nice?  I'm  crazy  about  it.  He  is  a  curio 
dealer,  the  owner  of  the  apartment.  Here  is  the  dish  closet. 
Here  is  the  kitchen.  Look  and  see  the  bedroom.  I  haven't 
got  my  bed  linen  yet.  Sit  down  and  I'll  talk  to  you.  Oh, 
I've  got  to  get  rid  of  this  hat;  my  head  aches. 

Mr.  L — :     Oh,  what  a  nice  lamp. 

Mrs.  U — :  Isn't  it  lovely?  See,  you  can  turn  the  lights  on 
here.  Look,  this  is  the  telephone  downstairs.  There's  one 
thing;  they  are  very  strict  here.  You  have  to  be  careful.  Sit 
down  there. 

iPause  of  a  minute.) 

Mrs.  U — :  I  can't  swallow  a  pill  to  save  my  life.  Now, 
I'll  tell  you  what  I  have  to  say.  Do  you  know  I  like  that  pic- 
ture? I  think  it  must  have  been  a  calendar.  You  know  he 
said  he  would  buy  me  anything  I  wanted.  He  is  some  kid, 
that  boy.  This  is  just  like  the  headache  I  had  two  weeks 
ago.  I  had  such  a  headache.  All  day  Sunday  I  was  in  bed 
and  I  couldn't  get  any  relief.  It's  just  the  same  old  way  all 
along.  It  is  so  trying.  Now,  I  want  to  hear  all  about  your 
trip.     I  am  terribly  interested.     Tell  me  all  about  it. 

Mr.  L — :     Now,  tell  me  exactly  what  you  told  him. 

Mrs.  U — :     Sit  down.     Here's  what  I  told  him. 

Mr.  L — :     What's  his  name  and  all  about  him? 

Mrs.  U — :  Well,  the  first  time  I  met  him  he  told  me  all 
about  the  story  of  his  life.  Then,  some  time  after  that  I  met 
him  again.  "Hey,  kid,"  he  said,  "you  know  a  lot  of  people  in 
Wall  Street;   take  me  down  there  and  introduce  me  to  some 


ARTS  OF  THE  OPERATIVES  169 

of  them."  I  said:  "I  have  a  friend  who  is  very  well  con- 
nected." Well,  I  saw  him  again  and  I  told  him  that  I  had  met 
you,  and  that  you  were  right  close  to  the  Government  and 
were  in  touch  with  the  Government  offices  and  you  got  Inside 
news.  Of  course,  I  didn't  tell  him  that  you  were  in  the  Secret 
Service  of  the  Government.  You  don't  want  me  to  tell  him 
that,  do  you? 

Mr.  L — :     No,  not  at  all.     I'll  decide  what  I  want  to  tell  him. 
Mrs.  U — :     Do  you  think  he  could  be  a  spy? 

Mr.  L — :  Yes,  he  could  be.  He  acts  just  like  one.  He  acts 
like  a  perfect  damn  fool. 

Mrs.  U — :     Well,  how  do  they  act? 

Mr.  L — :     They  act  just  this  way.     That's  their  game. 

Mrs.  U — :     Oh,  I  get  so  excited  about  your  work. 

Mr.  L — :  Yes;  you  know,  if  you  were  to  catch  a  spy  like 
that,  it  would  be  worth  $5,000  to  you. 

Mrs.  U—:     $5000!     Would  it  really?    Who  would  pay  that? 

Mr.  L — :     The  Government. 

Mrs.  U—:  Oh,  it's  so  exciting!  You  must  think  me  silly, 
but  I  can't  help  getting  all  excited  about  this  Secret  Service 
work!     And  you're  the  head  of  it,  too,  aren't  you? 

Mr.  L — :  I  am  not  the  head  of  it  all.  I  am  only  the  head 
of  certain  branches.     You  know  there  are  different  branches. 

Mrs.  U — :     Which  are  you  in? 

Mr.  L — :     In  the  Treasury  Department. 

Mrs.  U — :     In  the  Treasury  Department? 

Mr.  L — :  Yes,  I'm  the  head  of  the  Treasury  Department 
and  three  other  Departments  besides.  Four  of  them  alto- 
gether. There  are  seventeen  different  branches,  you  know; 
I  have  full  charge  of  this  one. 

Mrs.  U — :  No  wonder  you're  so  busy!  Well,  have  you 
caught  any  spies  lately? 

Mr.  L — :  Oh,  yes.  We  get  them  right  along.  I  got  forty 
last  week. 

Mrs.  U — :  You  know,  we  have  known  each  other  a  long 
time  now,  haven't  we?  You  know,  it's  funny  how  you  meet 
people  through  advertisements.  Nearly  everybody  that  I  met 
in  a  business  way  I  met  through  advertisements.  And  every- 
body that  I  met  that  way  turned  out  to  be  a  factor  in  my  life! 
I  met  a  good  friend  of  mine,  a  girl,  through  an  ad.  And  then, 
I  have  got  some  very  good  positions  through  advertisements. 
And  then,  I  met  you  through  that  ad  in — let's  see — was  it  the 
"Times"? 

3Ir.  L—:     No,  the  "Herald." 

Mrs.  U — :  Tell  me  about  that  girl  that  you  said  you  had 
that  was  so  good.    Is  she  still  catching  spies? 


170  THE  WEB 

Mr.  L — :     Yes;  she  got  fourteen  last  week. 

Mrs.  U — :  Gee!  She  must  have  worked  overtime.  .  .  . 
Did  she  have  to  do  what  you  wanted  me  to  do? 

Mr.  L — :     Oh,  yes,  you  see  she  was  crazy  about  the  work. 

Mrs.  U — :  Gosh,  you  know  that  is  very  interesting  to  me. 
How  many  girls  did  you  get  from  that  advertisement?  I 
guess  you  think  I  am  a  fool,  but  I  get  so  interested,  and  I  like 
to  have  you  tell  me  all  these  things. 

Mr.  L — :  Oh,  I  don't  remember.  You  know,  I  think  the 
spies  would  take  to  you  and  I  don't  blame  them.  I  know  I 
would. 

Mrs.  U — :  Do  you  think  they  M'ould  like  a  red-head?  Is 
there  any  demand  at  all  for  them? 

Mr.  L — :     Oh,  I  couldn't  see  all  of  them. 

Mrs.  U — :  I  guess  you're  busy  now  with  all  these  German 
submarines  around,  aren't  you? 

Mr.  L — :  Oh,  yes,  indeed;  very  busy.  They  are  very  dan- 
gerous people. 

Mrs.  U — :  Do  you  always  have  to  teach  those  girls  that 
you  have  in  the  Secret  Service?  You  know  I  have  been  read- 
ing all  about  this  spy  work  and  this  Secret  Service  thing  since 
I  saw  you.  I  am  so  much  interested.  They  go  by  numbers, 
don't  they,  instead  of  names?  Well,  if  I  was  in  the  service, 
would  you  look  up  all  about  where  I  was  born,  and  who  my 
people  were,  and  everything  like  that?  Would  you  do  that  to 
see  if  I  had  any  German  blood?  I'll  tell  you  why  I  ask  it, 
because  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  people  told  me  that  they  would  have 
to  look  me  up  very  carefully  and  that  they  would  have  to  find 
out  if  any  of  my  people  were  born  in  Germany.  .  .  .  How 
long  have  you  been  in  the  Government  Secret  Service? 

Mr.  L — :     Twenty-five  years. 

Mrs.  U — :  Twenty-five  years!  Oh,  dear,  and  no  one  would 
ever  know  that  you  were  in  it. 

Mr.  L — :     Come  here — oh,  you're  just  a  little  kiddie. 

Mrs.  U — :     Oh,  now,  wait  a  minute,  just  wait  a  minute! 

The  operatives  who  were  listening  to  this  partially 
reported  conversation  in  the  janitor's  room  did  not  wait 
even  a  minute.     They  broke  down  the  door  and  arrested 

Mr.  L .     He  was  turned  over  to  the  United  States 

Secret  Service  and  arraigned  before  the  Assistant  District 
Attorney.  His  activities  as  an  employer  of  espionage 
agents  thereupon  ceased  abruptly.  He  was  a  cheap  and 
dirty  imposter. 

It  was  found  in  hundreds  of  cases  —  and  the  knowledge 


ARTS  OF  THE  OPERATIVES  171 

was  invariably  suppressed  —  that  an  alien  suspect's  sud- 
den and  mysterious  shifts  and  changes,  his  suspicious  and 
watchful  conduct,  his  evasive  acts,  all  had  to  do  with  noth- 
ing more  than  the  fact  that  the  man  had  a  mistress  or  so 
in  another  part  of  the  city.  The  woman  in  his  case  very 
often  was  not  the  woman  in  the  case  at  all,  for  there  was 
no  case,  so  far  as  the  League  was  concerned.  But  countless 
men  were  quietly  warned.  Often  with  tears  they  implored 
the  secrecy  which  was  given  them.  There  are  hundreds, 
perhaps  thousands,  of  men  in  America  whose  private  lives 
are  known  to  the  League  and  not  known  in  their  own 
families.  There  is  yet  to  be  known  the  first  case  where 
any  advantage  ever  was  taken  of  the  unintended  victim 
caught  in  the  general  meshes  of  the  Web ;  but  it  may  be 
interesting  for  any  of  those  of  guilty  conscience  who  by 
chance  may  read  these  lines,  to  know  that  their  lives  are 
filed  away,  cross-indexed,  for  future  reference  in  the  vast 
archives  of  the  Department  of  Justice  at  Washington! 

The  extent  of  these  **  woman  cases,"  as  they  were  known, 
is  very  considerable,  and  the  per  cent  of  suspect  spy  cases 
which  simmered  down  to  a  petticoat  basis  is  a  very  large 
one.  A  great  part  of  the  work  of  the  League  was  done  in 
finding  the  woman,  if  not  in  searching  for  her  specifically. 
The  League  brought  up  from  the  deep-sea  soundings  of  its 
steel  meshes  all  the  sordid  and  unworthy  phases  of  human 
life  on  the  part  of  both  men  and  women.  But  while  comb- 
ing out  the  discards  of  human  intrigue,  the  League  often 
found  the  evidence  it  really  sought.  This  was  without  fail 
used  mercilessly  and  coldly. 

One  case,  handled  by  the  Central  Division  in  Chicago, 
we  may  call  the  Otero  case.  Word  came  from  El  Paso  that 
a  certain  prominent  Mexican,  a  revolutionary  and  political 
leader  with  aspirations  for  a  very  high  office  in  that  repub- 
lic, had  come  into  the  United  States  and  was  headed  north, 
probably  for  Chicago.  Nothing  was  known  about  him  and 
his  purpose  excepting  that  his  name  was  given.  The 
League  at  once  began  making  inquiries  about  Senor  Otero. 
It  was  found  that  he  was  traveling  in  a  special  car.  Obvi- 
ously, therefore,  he  was  a  man  of  money.  Ergo,  he  would 
go  to  a  good  hotel,  and  he  probably  would  make  a  reserva- 
tion in  advance.    Inquiries  were  made  by  telephone  at  all 


172  THE  WEB 

the  leading  hotels  in  Chicago,  which  in  practically  all  cases 
were  members  of  the  American  Protective  League.  Senor 
Otero  was  found  to  have  reserved  a  large  suite  at  the 
Blackstone,  and  had  made  the  time  of  his  arrival  known. 
From  that  time  on,  he  was  in  the  hands  of  the  American 
Protective  League,  although  he  never  knew  it.  The  boy 
who  took  his  bag  at  the  door  was  an  A.  P.  L.  operative, 
the  bellhop  who  responded  to  his  summons  was  an  A.  P.  L. 
operative,  his  waiter  at  table  was  A.  P.  L.,  his  night  taxi- 
cab  driver  was  A.  P.  L.  In  fact,  the  A.  P.  L.  put  Senor 
Otero  to  bed  and  woke  him  up  in  the  morning,  followed 
his  activities  during  the  day  and  knew  what  he  was  doing 
all  night.  It  was  not  discovered  that  he  was  engaged  in 
any  plot  against  the  peace  of  the  United  States,  but  was 
apparently  active  in  the  more  pleasant  task  of  spending 
some  money  he  had  gotten  hold  of  in  Mexico.  If  relatives 
or  friends  of  the  Senor  Otero  would  be  pleased  to  know 
how  he  spent  it,  the  nature  of  his  associations  in  Chicago 
by  day  —  or  night  —  and  if  they  can  persuade  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice  to  advise  them,  they  can  find  the  entire 
record  of  his  stay  in  Chicago.  Had  he  been  engaged  in 
any  suspicious  acts  against  this  country,  his  return  to  Mex- 
ico might  not  have  been  so  peaceful. 

If  an  A.  P.  L.  man  knew  the  chemistry  of  any  synthetic 
or  invisible  ink,  he  would  not  make  the  secret  public  any 
more  than  would  M.  I.  D.  Many  devices  for  making  and 
using  these  inks,  however,  are  very  generally  known, 
although  it  is  believed  that  Great  Britain  and  France  have 
gone  farthest  in  classifying  and  developing  them.  A  piece 
of  a  necktie  has  been  taken  from  one  German,  a  corner  of 
which,  snipped  off  and  put  in  a  glass  of  water,  would 
make  an  invisible  ink.  A  shoestring  has  been  known  to 
do  the  same  thing,  a  small  piece  of  it  making  enough  for 
a  letter  or  more.  A  shirt-stud  has  been  described  by  a 
foreign  operative,  which,  when  unscrewed  and  dropped 
into  a  glass  of  water,  would  do  the  same  thing  and  leave 
no  trace.  With  what  chemicals  were  these  articles  treated 
in  order  to  make  the  ink?  Ah,  that  is  another  matter. 
If  the  author  knew,  he  could  not  tell.  One  thing  is  sure, 
it  is  not  likely  that  the  most  inventive  writer  of  *' detect- 
ive "  stories  could  imagine  anything  more  ingenious   or 


ARTS  OF  THE  OPERATIVES  173 

more  baffling  than  some  of  these  well-known  methods  in 
use  by  our  own  men. 

Mr.  Byron  R.  Newton,  collector  at  the  port  of  New  York, 
gave  out  a  curious  story  on  the  work  done  by  the  Cus- 
toms Intelligence  Bureau,  created  as  a  lookout  for  smug- 
glers and  others.  This  service  was  employed  in  searching 
ships,  examining  baggage,  looking  out  for  explosive  bombs, 
invisible  writing,  and  so  forth.  Mr.  Newton's  story 
appeared  in  the  New  York  Herald  of  July  14,  1918,  and 
from  it  one  incident  may  be  taken. 

Through  the  Boarding  OflBcials,  a  passenger  who  arrived  the 
other  day  has  furnished  interesting  material  for  the  Intelli- 
gence Bureau  investigators.  The  passenger,  who  for  some 
time  had  been  a  resident  of  Germany,  although  an  American 
citizen,  said  he  had  been  approached  in  Dresden  by  German 
agents  and  asked  if  on  his  return  to  the  United  States  he 
would  obtain  military  and  other  information  of  interest  to 
the  Imperial  German  Intelligence  Bureau.  He  was  furnished 
with  a  code  to  be  used  by  him  for  forwarding  information  to 
Germany  and  also  with  a  formula  for  manufacturing  an  in- 
visitJe  ink,  and  with  paper  to  be  treated  by  a  special  process 
for  correspondence.  The  passenger,  in  evidence  of  what  he 
stated,  offered  four  collars  to  the  customs  officials.  They  ap- 
peared to  be  ordinary  negligee  collars  of  cream-colored  mate- 
rial— double,  turn-over  collars,  medium  height,  such  as  many 
men  wear  with  sport  shirts  or  for  informal  occasions.  The 
passenger  explained  the  purpose  of  these  collars  as  follows: 

"I  take  a  soup  plate  and  I  put  boiling  water  in  it  and  let  it 
stand  for  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  after  which  I  throw 
away  the  water.  The  plate  being  warm,  I  place  one  of  these 
collars  in  it.  I  pour  over  the  collar  one  hundred  grams  of 
boiling  water  and  let  it  stand  for  half  an  hour.  Then  I  wring 
out  the  collar,  and  the  water  that  remains  is  my  invisible  ink. 
They  call  it  'pyrogram.'  It  looks  like  water,  it  is  not  poison- 
ous and  it  can  be  drunk.  ^ 

"I  wash  my  hands,  since  they  are  wet  with  this  ink,  and 
take  the  paper  and  fold  it  crosswise  and  begin  the  letter, 
writing  two  fingers  from  the  edge.  I  let  it  dry,  and  then  take 
a  glass  of  water  and  put  about  one  teaspoonful  of  ammonia  in 
it.  With  a  piece  of  wadding  dipped  in  this  solution  of  am- 
monia and  water,  I  rub  the  paper  both  ways,  and  thus  prepare 
it  on  both  sides.  After  this  I  place  the  paper  in  this  wet  con- 
dition between  blotting  paper  and  under  heavy  books  or  a 
trunk  for  three  hours.     You  will  not  be  able  to  recognize  the 


174  THE  WEB 

paper  any  more.  It  looks  like  foreign  writing  paper,  very 
thin  and  glazed.  I  can  write  anything  I  choose  on  this  letter 
now.  AVhen  they  get  the  letter  and  develop  it  the  writing 
appears  positively  black.  I  head  the  letter  'Dear  Bob'  and 
they  know  it  is  a  code  letter.  When  I  am  through  with  the 
letter  I  use  the  word  'Schluss,'  because  in  developing  it,  they 
want  to  know  if  they  have  the  entire  letter,  and  that  word 
ends  it  up." 

This  passenger  also  told  the  examining  officials  that  in  car- 
rying addresses  without  an  address  book,  the  German  agents 
usually  take  a  bone  button  of  an  overcoat  or  a  large  button 
of  some  sort  and  on  the  reverse  side  scratch  the  address  with 
a  diamond,  sometimes  also  scratching  instructions  which  they 
cannot  carry  in  their  heads.  After  this  they  treat  the  button 
with  shellac,  or,  as  they  call  it  in  Germany,  "spitituslak." 
That  fills  the  crevices  and  dries  rapidly.  On  reaching  the 
destination,  they  use  pure  alcohol  to  wash  off  the  shellac. 
They  also  write  addresses  on  this  paper  and  work  them  into 
leather  buttons. 

Cipher  and  code  are  part  of  the  education  of  certain 
intelligence  officers,  but  into  a  discussion  of  these  matters 
we  may  not  go,  as  they  are  secrets  of  the  American  Gov- 
ernment. Our  own  experts  were  able  to  decipher  and 
decode  all  the  secret  messages  bearing  on  the  great  German 
plots  in  this  country,  but  this  was  not  usually  A.  P.  L. 
work.  Of  course,  the  lay  reader,  or  more  especially  the 
A.  P.  L.  member,  may  know  that  a  cipher  means  the  sub- 
stitution of  some  symbol,  or  some  number,  or  another 
letter,  for  each  letter  of  the  alphabet.  Or  the  real  letters 
may  be  transposed,  one  to  stand  for  another,  in  such  a  way 
that  only  the  sender  and  receiver  may  understand.  That 
looks  hard  to  read?  Not  at  all.  It  is  easier  than  code. 
It  is  said  that  any  cipher  message  can  be  unriddled  in 
time. 

A  code  is  a  scheme  agreed  on  by  which  the  two  parties 
substitute  certain  whole  words  for  the  real  words  of  the 
message.  A  code  message  might  seem  wholly  innocent  — 
let  us  say,  just  a  simple  comment  on  the  weather.  But 
suppose  *  *  bright  and  fair  ' '  meant  in  code  '  *  The  Leviathan 
sailed  this  morning,"  and  suppose  the  Leviathan  were  a 
transport  carrying  twelve  thousand  troops  to  France! 
Unless  the  de-code  artist  is  indeed  an  artist,  he  cannot 


ARTS  OF  THE  OPERATIVES  175 

know  what  interchange  in  ideas  had  been  agreed  upon 
for  interchanged  words ;  and  there  are  not  twenty-six  let- 
ters, but  26,000  words  which  may  be  transposed  in  mean- 
ing. The  big  German  spy  work  —  that  is,  the  chain  of 
messages  that  passed  between  the  German  Embassy  in 
America  and  the  Imperial  Headquarters  in  Berlin  —  was 
done  in  enciphered  code.  They  had  first  been  written  in 
German  before  coding,  and  after  coding,  the  code  was  put 
in  cipher.  None  the  less,  we  read  them,  and  von  Bern- 
storff.  Dr.  Albert,  et  al.,  are  no  more  on  our  soil. 

This  is  specialized,  expert  work  of  the  most  delicate  and 
difficult  sort,  and  is  not  for  the  average  amateur.  Some- 
times the  latter  had  more  enthusiasm  than  knowledge  in 
his  ambition  to  be  a  real  sleuth,  and  in  such  cases,  perhaps 
something  amusing  might  happen,  where  zeal  did  not  jump 
with  discretion. 


BOOK  n 

THE  TALES  OF  THE  CITIES 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO 

The  Birthplace  of  the  American  Protective  League  —  Cen- 
ter of  Enemy  Alien  Activities  —  Focus  of  German  Propa- 
ganda and  Home  of  Pro-German  Cults  and  Creeds  —  Story 
of  the  League's  Work  and  Workers. 

The  unvarnished  story  of  the  growth  and  accomplish- 
ments of  this  League  is  the  greatest  proof  in  the  world 
of  the  abilit}^  for  self-government  of  intelligent,  educated 
and  thinking  men.  The  American  Protective  League  was 
made  up  of  sober  citizens  who  had  something  to  protect. 
It  was  no  one  man,  no  one  set  of  men,  no  one  city,  which 
makes  it  great.  The  real  credit  belongs  to  the  unclassified 
and  unsegregated  Little  Fellow. 

We  had  in  this  war  the  usual  amount  of  self-seeking. 
Our  first  pages  abounded  in  pictures  and  praises  of  our 
great  men,  born  of  God  to  do  wonders  in  ships,  supplies, 
aeroplanes  and  armies.  Some  of  them  worked  for  a  dollar 
a  year.  Some  of  them  earned  that  much,  many  a  great 
deal  less.  The  scandals  of  this  war  are  as  great  as  the 
scandals  of  any  war,  when  you  come  to  know  the  truth 
about  them.  But  there  is  no  scandal  attached  to  the  plain, 
average  citizen  in  this  war.  It  was  he,  the  real  democrat 
and  the  real  American,  who  won  this  war  for  us. 

There  is  no  charge  of  vain-glory,  no  charge  of  ineffi- 
ciency and  self-seeking  attached  to  the  story  of  Chateau 
Thierry  and  Belleau  Wood  and  the  Argonne,  where  died 
thousands  of  Little  Fellows  become  great  in  making  good. 
Neither  is  there  any  scandal  attaching  to  the  unknown 
men,  the  unnamed  Little  Fellows  who  *'  made  good  "  back 
home  behind  the  lines  —  the  men  who  usually  get  lost 
after  any  war  when  the  glory  is  being  passed  around  by 
the  politicians  and  paid  historians. 

179 


180  THE  WEB 

There  is,  in  a  work  such  as  this,  no  such  thing  as  divid- 
ing or  apportioning  personal  or  local  credit  or  approba- 
tion. Names,  portraits,  credits,  praises  —  nothing  of  these 
is  desired  or  may  be  begun,  for  there  could  be  no  end; 
and  besides,  one  man  is  as  big  and  as  good  as  another  in 
A.  P.  L.  The  League  existed  in  countless  communities 
all  over  the  country  —  so  many,  it  is  not  possible  even  to 
name  a  fraction  of  them.  There  is  not  even  the  possibility 
of  mentioning  more  than  a  few  of  the  greater  centers  of 
the  work,  and  that  in  partial  fashion  only. 

In  this  plan,  perhaps,  the  city  of  Chicago  naturally  may 
come  first,  because,  as  we  have  seen,  it  was  there  that  the 
League  began.  Besides,  in  this  great  Western  hive  of  all 
the  races,  there  are  far  more  Germans  than  there  are 
Americans.  Have  you  not  heard  that  astounding  utter- 
ance of  a  sitting  Mayor  to  the  effect  that  Chicago  is  ''  the 
sixth  greatest  German  city  on  the  earth  "?  One  also  has 
heard  an  earlier  Mayor  of  Chicago  say  that  in  his  political 
plans  he  cared  nothing  at  all  for  the  American  vote. 
*'  Give  me  the  Austrian  and  the  Italian  and  the  Polish 
vote,*'  he  said ;  *'  but  above  all,  give  me  the  German  vote !  " 
Perhaps  he  would  not  be  so  outspoken  to-day. 

Among  the  unassimilated  rabble  who  make  a  certain  por- 
tion of  Chicago 's  polyglot  politik-futter,  there  are  perhaps 
more  troublemakers  than  in  any  other  city  of  America. 
It  is  our  own  fault  that  they  make  so  much  trouble,  but 
they  do  make  it  and  they  have.  Bolsheviki,  socialists, 
incendiaries,  I.  "W.  W.'s,  Lutheran  treason-talkers,  Russel- 
lites,  Bergerites,  all  the  other-ites,  religious  and  social 
fanatics,  third-sex  agitators,  long  haired  visionaries  and 
work-haters  from  every  race  in  the  world  —  Chicago  had 
them  and  has  them  still,  because  she  has  invited  them, 
accepted  them  and  made  them  free  of  the  place.  Cheap 
politicians  have  done  the  rest;  mayors  who  care  nothing 
for  the  American  vote. 

This  was  the  situation  when  we  declared  war.  We  then 
heard  less  about  the  *'  duty  "  the  foreign-born  had  reserved 
when  they  swore  (and  then  forgot)  their  solemn  Del- 
briicked  oaths  of  renunciation  of  all  other  allegiance,  and 
of  loyalty  to  America  alone.  But  underneath  this  smug 
oath  of  faith  to  America,  all  too  often  the  Teuton  and  his 


THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO  181 

kin,  the  Kaiser's  friend  and  sympathizer,  still  hid 
unchanged.  To-day,  as  thousands  of  them  read  these  lines, 
they  know  that  this  is  the  truth. 

When  we  went  to  war,  the  militant  Chicago  Germans 
did  not  change  —  they  simply  submerged,  German  fashion ; 
that  was  all.  Then  Chicago  dropped  her  paravanes  — 
spread  down  her  WEB  —  to  guard  against  under-surface 
attacks. 

Once  firmly  established,  the  Chicago  Division  grew  by  leaps 
and  bounds.  On  March  22,  1917,  the  first  definite  steps  were 
taken  toward  the  formation  of  a  compact  organization.  Cap- 
tains were  appointed  by  Mr.  Briggs,  and  these  in  turn  organ- 
ized their  own  working  squads.  Mr.  Clabaugh  was  now 
beginning  to  get  some  of  the  assistance  he  so  sorely  needed. 

Then,  on  April  6,  came  war.  Followed  the  days  of  swift 
expansion  and  organization  which  have  been  covered  in  the 
preceding  pages.  Every  day  saw  new  men  enrolled,  big  men, 
men  eager  to  contribute  time,  money,  experience,  brains, 
energy  and  faithfulness.  This  is  the  story  of  the  whole 
League,  and  this  is  Chicago's  story,  too. 

On  April  10,  Mr.  Charles  Daniel  Frey  was  appointed  a 
captain  in  the  Chicago  Division,  and  shortly  afterward,  Mr. 
Victor  Elting  came  into  the  organization  as  an  appointee  of 
Mr.  Frey.  Two  months  had  now  passed  since  the  first  Chi- 
cago operative  had  gone  forth  on  an  official  mission.  Chicago 
Division  was  demonstrably  a  success.  Yet  something  more 
was  needed.  Work  was  piling  up  faster  than  personnel.  It 
was  now  patent  that  Chicago  must  have  a  larger,  stronger 
organization  —  an  organization  under  direct  executive  con- 
trol which  would  do  its  work  with  efficiency  and  business-like 
despatch.  System  was  needed ;  speed  was  needed  —  and  men. 
On  May  22,  as  a  first  step  in  the  reorganization,  Mr.  Briggs 
appointed  Mr.  Frey  as  Chief  of  the  Chicago  Division  and 
Mr.  Elting  as  Assistant  Chief. 

Mr.  Frey  and  Mr.  Elting  thereupon  developed  a  compre- 
hensive plan  of  organization  for  the  Chicago  Division  —  a 
plan  which  was  adopted  in  its  main  outlines  by  almost  all  of 
the  large  cities.  Chicago  was  divided  into  zones,  and  an 
Inspector  was  appointed  to  direct  and  supervise  the  work 
in  each  zone.  Bureaus  were  established  covering  the  whole 
range  of  League  operations.     Bankers,  railroad  men,  mer- 


182  THE  WEB 

chants,  professional  men  —  leading  men  from  every  sphere 
of  activity  were  placed  in  charge  of  bureau  work  for  which 
they  were  especially  fitted. 

The  League  was  now  a  going  concern  in  Chicago.  That 
it  should  become  national  in  every  sense  of  the  word  was 
inevitable.  In  October,  1917,  Mr.  Frey  and  Mr.  Siting  joined 
Mr.  Briggs  in  Washington  and,  in  conference  with  the  Attor- 
ney General  of  the  United  States,  it  was  decided  to  establish 
National  Headquarters  in  the  Capital.  The  three  men  who 
were  responsible  for  this  great  step  became  the  national 
directors  of  the  League.  Pending  the  appointment  of  a 
Chief  and  Assistant  Chief  for  the  Chicago  Division,  Mr.  R.  A. 
Gunn,  who  had  made  a  most  efficient  record  as  an  Inspector, 
was  appointed  Acting  Chief. 

On  January  26,  1918,  Mr.  John  F.  Gilchrist  was  appointed 
Chief  of  the  Chicago  Division,  a  position  which  he  continued 
to  hold  until  September  21,  1918,  six  weeks  before  the 
Armistice.  Under  his  wise  leadership,  the  organization 
gained  in  strength  and  numbers  and  influence,  and  handled, 
in  wholly  admirable  fashion,  the  many  difficult  problems 
which  arose  during  nine  of  the  most  trying  months  of  the 
war.  The  Chicago  unit,  at  the  close  of  1917,  numbered  4,500 
active  members  and  about  2,000  industrial  members.  At  the 
time  of  the  Armistice,  these  numbers  had  been  increased  to 
6,142  active  members  and  over  7,000  members  in  the  indus- 
trial division. 

Upon  the  resignation  of  Mr.  Gilchrist,  a  committee  plan 
of  executive  control  was  adopted,  and  Mr.  R.  A.  Gunn  was 
appointed  Chief.  Mr.  Gunn's  report  to  D.  J.,  covering  the 
work  of  the  Chicago  Division  almost  to  the  period  of  the 
Armistice,  will  give  at  least  a  partial  notion  of  what  was 
accomplished,  and  should,  therefore,  be  summarized: 

The  greater  part  of  the  work  of  the  organization  is,  of 
course,  the  work  assigned  from  the  Bureau  of  Investigation, 
with  such  complaints  as  are  received  from  our  own  members, 
both  active  and  industrial,  and  a  number  that  come  through 
the  mail.  We  receive  an  average  of  175  D.  J.  cases  daily. 
Our  reports  when  turned  in  are  vis6d  by  the  Chief  of  our 
Bureau  of  Investigation,  and  those  deemed  ready  for  prose- 
cution are  turned  over  to  the  Special  Agent  assigned,  and  by 
him  are  taken  to  the  District  Attorney  for  active  prosecution. 
I   believe   that  our   co-operation  with   the   Bureau  has   been 


THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO  183 

active  and  I  think,  helpful,  at  all  times.  We  have  furnished 
A.  P.  L.  men  used  for  special  work,  such  as  under-cover  inves- 
tigations in  the  County  Jail  and  in  the  Internment  Camps. 
Through  our  organization,  which  covers  practically  every  bank- 
ing institution,  mercantile,  industrial  and  manufacturing 
plant,  every  profession  and  trade,  in  the  entire  Chicago  dis- 
trict, we  have  furnished  special  and  specific  information  from 
among  our  own  members,  which  the  Bureau  of  Investigation 
has  generously  intimated  could  hardly  have  been  secured  from 
any  other  source. 

At  its  own  expense,  A.  P.  L.  furnished  three  competent 
stenographers  for  a  period  of  three  months  to  systematize, 
card  and  index  the  18,000  male  German  alien  enemies,  regis- 
tered by  the  United  States  Marshal.  During  the  "drives"  of 
the  Red  Cross,  many  rumors  and  derogatory  statements  con- 
cerning the  work  of  the  Red  Cross  were  spread  broadcast 
through  the  country.  A.  P.  L.  ran  down  hundreds  of  com- 
plaints, secured  many  conviction.s,  and  handled  the  entire 
investigation  of  the  Red  Cross  until  quite  recently,  w^hen  they 
added  a  Bureau  of  Investigation  of  their  own.  The  propa- 
ganda has  practically  ceased. 

Work  in  co-operation  with  the  Local  Fuel  Administrator 
was  always  active.  Beginning  with  the  fuelless  :Mondays,  A. 
P.  L.  placed  at  his  disposal  some  3,500  men  for  checking  up 
violations.  On  the  lightless  Monday  and  Tuesday  night,  A. 
P.  L.  had  out  the  entire  active  organization  checking  viola- 
tions of  this  sort.  Again,  on  the  order  of  the  Administrator 
that  no  gasoline  should  be  used  on  Sundays  for  pleasure,  the 
entire  organization  was  called  on  for  service.  During  the 
wheatless  and  meatless  days,  also,  the  entire  organization 
was  called  on  to  check  and  report  violations  among  the  res- 
taurants, hotels  and  other  places. 

Chicago  received  daily  from  M.  I.  D.  at  Washington  an  aver- 
age of  twenty-five  cases  for  character  and  loyalty  investigations 
of  civilians  and  officers  going  into  foreign  service.  This  work 
alone  required  the  services  of  a  Bureau  Chief  and  five  clerical 
assistants  at  headquarters. 

Following  the  bomb  explosion  at  the  Federal  building  (where, 
by  the  way,  A.  P.  L.  mobilized  within  half  an  hour  1,700  men 
for  duty  if  called  upon),  the  officials  of  the  United  States  War 
Exposition  called  on  the  organization  for  help.  For  eight 
days,  an  average  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  A.  P.  L.  men 
mingled  with  the  crowd  both  afternoon  and  evening  with  a 
view  of  preventing  panics  and  of  detecting  and  forestalling 
any  outrage. 

Next  in  volume  to  the  work  from  D.  J.  was  that  which  came 


184  THE  WEB 

in  under  the  Selective  Service  Act  in  connection  with  the  draft 
problem.  In  addition  to  the  locating  of  registrants,  the  divi- 
sion, on  request,  conducted  investigations  on  a  number  of 
Local  Boards,  and  also  investigated  thousands  of  cases  in- 
volving deferred  classifications,  where  the  result  of  the  inves- 
tigation placed  the  registrant  in  Class  1-A  and  made  him 
available  for  immediate  service. 

At  the  specific  request  of  the  commanding  oflQcer  of  the 
local  branch  of  the  Ordnance  Department,  Chicago  division 
conducted  a  total  of  536  investigations  of  officers  and  em- 
ployees of  the  Ordnance  Department  in  Chicago.  Similar 
work  was  done  for  the  Bureau  of  Investigation. 

Chief  Gunn  concludes  his  simple  and  convincing  narra- 
tive with  a  few  division  figures : 

In  conclusion  I  would  say  that  at  the  headquarters  of  our 
units  we  employed  sixty-six  stenographers  and  clerks  who  were 
directed  by  thirty-one  able  men  who  gave  their  entire  time, 
days,  nights,  and  often  Sundays,  without  one  penny  from  our 
Treasury,  to  the  direction  of  this  work.  In  addition  to  this,  we 
maintained  eighteen  captain's  offices,  the  average  monthly  ex- 
penditure of  each  being  in  the  neighborhood  of  $300.  Exclu- 
sive of  this,  our  average  monthly  expenses  were  about  $7,000, 
which  money  was  raised  both  from  our  own  membership  and 
from  subscriptions  of  individuals  and  commercial  houses. 

We  have  been  insistent  at  all  times  that  our  men  should 
set  a  patriotic  example  to  all  others  in  accepting  active  serv- 
ice when  liable  or  able.  This  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that 
five  hundred  and  fifty  of  our  members  are  now  in  the  serv- 
ice. I  have  no  hesitancy  in  saying  that  for  loyalty,  abil- 
ity, judgment,  and  willingness  to  serve  their  country,  I  do  not 
know,  nor  do  I  believe  there  can  exist,  a  more  splendid  body 
of  men  than  is  contained  in  the  membership  of  our  Division  of 
the  American  Protective  League. 

Follows  the  statistical  record  of  the  work  accomplished 
by  the  Chicago  division  of  the  American  Protective  League 
up  to  January  21,  1919 : 

Neutrality  cases  investigated 43,026 

War  Department — all  branches. 

Character  and  loyalty  investigations 3,739 

American  Red  Cross. 

Character  and  loyalty  investigations 115 

Illinois  Volunteer  Training  Corps. 

Character  and  loyalty  investigations 141 


THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO  185 

War  Risk  Insurance  cases 230 

U.  S.  Bureau  of  Naturalization  cases 3,905 

Draft  investigations  30,440 

Food  Administration  cases. 

Food  investigations    12,637 

Sugar  investigations^   179 

Fuel  Administration  cases. 

Coal  investigations  3,263 

Lightless  Night  investigations 1,500 

Total  investigations^ 99,175 

Number  of  men  temporarily  detained  for  examination 
of  Registration  and  Classification  Cards  during  the 

Slacker  Drive  of  July,  1918 200,000 

Delinquents    apprehended    and    forced    to    appear    at 

local  Draft  Boards 44,167 

Deserters  apprehended  and  sent  to  Military  Camps..       1,900 
Record  compiled  for  the  U.  S.  Marshal  for  Alien  Ene- 
mies ;  number  of  entries 18,000 

Escaped   criminals   apprehended   and   turned   over   to 

Police  Department 38 

Blue  Slip  Summons  issued 726 

Automobile  license  numbers  registered  on  first  Gasless 

Sunday    129,204 

Photographs,  maps,  postal  cards  of  views  of  Germany 

sent  to  War  Department 9,525 

But  it  is  from  the  notebooks  of  the  operatives,  recording 
varied  activities  all  in  the  day's  work,  that  we  get  the 
real  reflex  of  the  A.  P.  L.  We  cannot  forego  giving  a 
few  extracts  from  the  stories  of  Chicago  captains. 

Let  us  take  at  random  the  summary  from  S ,  cap- 
tain of  District  No.  11,  where  there  were  fifty-six  members 
—  forty  active  operatives,  under  a  captain,  two  lieutenants 
and  a  legal  advisor.  This  district  covers  a  large  portion 
of  the  most  German  section  of  Chicago,  part  of  which  is 
loyal  and  part  very  much  otherwise.  In  six  months,  dur- 
ing the  last  year  of  the  war,  there  were  512  cases  assigned 
to  the  district  by  headquarters,  and  the  district  turned 

lA  direct  result  of  the  sug-ar  investig-ations  was  the  saving  of 
millions  of  pounds  of  sugar,  and  the  donation  to  the  American  Red 
Cross   of  thousands  of  dollars  by  violators. 

"  In  addition  to  the  above,  hundreds  of  jewelry  store  investigations 
were  made  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  information  regarding 
alleged  price  discrimination  against  soldiers  and  sailors;  also, 
hundreds  of  investigations  of  tailors,  clothing  stores  and  department 
stores  in  the  interest  of  Army  uniform  regulations. 


186  THE  WEB 

in  to  headquarters  298  complaints.  Character  and  loyalty 
investigations  to  the  number  of  fifty-three  were  made, 
necessitating  from  five  to  fifteen  interviews  each.  In  the 
slacker  drive,  July  11-13,  a  total  of  1,744  individual  cases 
were  interviewed  and  disposed  of  in  this  district.  Between 
9  :00  p.  m.  and  4 :00  a.  m.  one  night,  eighty-one  I.  W.  W. 
investigations  were  handled. 

The  total  number  of  cases  on  record  in  this  district  for 
the  six  months  is  3,842,  which,  if  averaged,  gives  sixty- 
eight  cases  to  each  operative,  but  as  only  forty  were  active, 
the  average  should  be  figured  as  nearly  eighty  cases  per 
capita.  There  is  not  figured  in  the  foregoing  about  one 
thousand  interviews  which  were  necessary  in  making  up 
reports  to  different  departments  of  the  Government  on 
factories,  saloons,  garages  and  other  buildings  and  struc- 
tures, which  might  come  under  the  head  of  miscellaneous 
services. 

The  activities  of  the  operatives  of  District  No.  11  were 
not  confined  to  the  boundaries  of  their  own  district.  An 
illustration  will  show  what  is  meant.  A  deserter  was  being 
protected  by  all  branches  of  his  family.  Operatives  spent 
nights  interviewing  every  ascertainable  relative  and  friend. 
Nothing  could  be  learned  except  that  the  various  members 
of  the  family,  male  and  female,  were  so  mixed  in  their  sex 
relations  that  apparently  no  two  of  the  opposite  sex  were 
Living  together  in  a  legally  permissible  way.  A  chance 
lead  pointed  to  a  couple  living  in  the  country  ten  miles 
beyond  the  city  limits.  An  hour's  interview  with  the  man 
and  his  consort,  the  two  being  examined  separately, 
resultedj  in  the  chance  mention  of  Norfolk,  Virginia.  Being 
pressed  on  this  remark,  the  man  hesitatingly  declared  he 
had  had  letters  from  Norfolk  from  the  suspect  who  was 
working  there  and  that  he,  the  witness,  would  himself 
write  to  Norfolk  at  once  and  get  definite  information. 
The  operatives  agreed  cheerfully  to  the  proposition.  On 
their  return  to  the  city,  a  telegram  was  immediately  dis- 
patched to  Norfolk.  By  the  time  the  letter  from  the 
**  loyal  "  relative  reached  Norfolk,  word  was  received  that 
the  deserter  was  located  and  taken  into  custody.  The 
action  of  this  little  drama  was  staged  entirely  outside  of 
District  No.  11. 


THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO  187 

During  the  **  heatless  days  "  two  operatives  from  the 
same  district  entered  a  saloon.  They  found  it  warm,  the 
heat  coming  from  a  large  radiator  in  the  middle  of  the 
room  covered  by  a  table.  The  proprietor  claimed  he  was 
unable  to  shut  off  this  heat  without  shutting  off  the  heat 
from  rooms  above  where  he  had  lodgers.  The  operatives 
went  to  the  cellar  and  found  no  attempt  had  been  made 
to  shut  off  the  heat  from  the  saloon.  Returning  to  the 
saloon,  they  investigated  a  back  room,  which  was  also 
heated,  and  where  they  found  four  men  playing  cards. 
The  proprietor  claimed  these  men  were  his  lodgers  and 
that  this  was  their  sitting-room.  A  search  was  made  and 
evidence  found  which  proved  these  men  to  be  conducting 
a  regular  clearing-house  of  information  for  the  enemy's 
use.  Leads  were  discovered  that  spread  in  many  direc- 
tions and  made  the  case  one  of  the  most  important  handled 
by  the  District.  A  camouflaged  saloon  radiator  w^as  the 
starting  point. 

Each  operative  discovered  that  the  badge  he  wore  bred 
a  feeling  of  respect  or  fear  for  the  authority  of  Uncle 
Sam  which  was  quite  marked.  Seldom  was  an  attempt 
made  to  dispute  its  meaning  or  to  take  exception  to  the 
request  or  direction  made  under  its  authority.  The  most 
desperate  characters  showed  a  meekness  and  a  docility 
that  was  surprising.  The  only  explanation  reasonable  is 
that  the  United  States  has  from  the  start  of  the  war  shown 
the  world  and  its  own  people  that  it  meant  business,  and 
that  in  playing  with  the  authorized  agencies  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, criminals  were  not  playing  with  politicians  or 
officials  who  might  be  influenced,  but  w^ith  the  newly  and 
sternly  roused  sense  of  American  loyalty  which  would 
brook  no  traitor  or  near-traitor  under  the  Star  and  Stripes. 

District  No.  13  had  an  interesting  case  handled  by  Lieu- 
tenant McR and  Operative  L .    They  searched 

the  room  occupied  by  the  suspect  and  found  two  handbags 
and  several  suit-cases  filled  with  clothing  and  some  chem- 
icals. They  interviewed  the  subject.  His  registration  card 
gave  his  serial  and  order  number,  and  draft  board  status 
which  was  Class  No.  5  Austrian.  The  operatives  went  back 
to  report  this  to  the  Inspector,  and  upon  returning  found 
that  the  subject,  his  wife  and  sister  had  fled.    By  calling 


188  THE  WEB 

upon  the  different  taxicab  companies  in  the  neighborhood, 
it  was  found  that  they  had  used  a  yellow  taxicab  to  move 
their  effects  to  an  apartment  several  miles  distant.  A  raid 
was  immediately  organized.  Four  men  and  two  detective 
sergeants  went  to  the  new  address,  and  the  apartment  was 
surrounded.  One  of  the  men  saw  a  figure  which  appeared 
to  be  a  woman,  attempting  to  cross  the  area  between  the 
two  buildings  from  one  third  story  window  to  another, 
and  he  called  to  her  to  stop.  One  of  the  men  inside  the 
building,  hearing  the  call,  put  his  head  out  and  found 
the  subject  on  the  window  sill  of  the  adjoining  building 
in  a  very  embarrassing  position.  It  was  not  a  woman, 
but  the  suspect,  in  woman's  clothes!  He  was  hauled  in 
and  put  under  arrest.  In  the  meantime  an  analysis  of 
the  chemicals  had  been  made  and  they  were  found  to  con- 
sist of  materials  for  the  manufacture  of  enough  explosives 
to  blow  out  another  end  of  the  postoffice  building.  Infor- 
mation was  received  from  the  League  at  New  York  to  the 
effect  that  he  was  a  very  dangerous  enemy  alien. 

This  same  District  landed  another  good  case.  One  morn- 
ing a  traveling  man  heard  a  little  girl  say  to  a  small  boy 
playmate,  **  We  have  a  fine  piano  in  our  flat,"  and  the 
boy  finally  answered,  *'  That's  nothing,  we've  got  a  Ger- 
man spy  in  ours. ' '  The  traveling  man  turned  a  complaint 
in  to  the  Department  of  Justice  and  in  due  course  it  came 
back  to  our  district  to  be  investigated.  The  operative  had 
little  to  start  with.  Finally  he  asked  a  little  girl  if  she 
had  ever  heard  any  boy  make  such  a  remark.  By  merest 
chance,  she  happened  to  be  one  of  the  children  who  had 
overheard  the  boy,  and  at  once  pointed  out  where  he  lived. 
The  operative  then  went  to  the  apartment  and  questioned 
the  boy's  mother,  telling  her  that  he  was  getting  a  list  of 
boarding-houses  in  that  district  for  directory  purposes  and, 
of  course,  asking  her  the  names  and  occupations  of  all 
lodgers.  He  noticed  that  one  of  the  names  was  German 
and  after  he  had  finished  his  list  he  asked  her  if  he  might 
see  the  accommodations.  When  he  reached  the  German's 
room,  he  saw  a  trunk  of  foreign  make.  He  opene<i  it  and 
found  lying  inside  on  top  of  the  clothing  a  cartridge  belt 
filled  with  loaded  cartridges.  This  he  noticed  had  seen 
much  use  and  was  worn  smooth.     He  also  found  papers. 


THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO  189 

drawings,  a  Lueger  pistol  and  several  other  things  which 
an  alien  enemy  is  not  supposed  to  enjoy  during  war  times. 
The  landlady  stated  that  the  man  was  a  draftsman  in  the 
Federal  Building.  It  was  subsequently  found  that  the 
drawings  were  plans  of  the  Municipal  Pier  and  the  Fed- 
eral Building.  About  five  o'clock  the  next  morning,  sev- 
eral Federal  officers  took  the  man  do^^l  to  the  Bureau  of 
Investigation  and  found  that  he  was  an  enemy  alien  in 
the  employ  of  the  German  Government.  Within  twenty- 
four  hours  he  was  on  his  way  to  Leavenworth  under  an 
order  of  internment. 

Women  are  not  enlisted  in  espionage  work  for  M.  I.  D. 
and  were  not  employed  as  operatives  in  the  Chicago  A.  P. 
L.  —  with  one  exception.  Many  a  suspect  has  found  ' '  Mrs. 
B  ' '  fatally  easy  to  look  at  and  listen  to  —  even  easy  to 
talk  too  much  to ! 

Here  is  a  '^  Mrs.  B  "  case.    The  subject,  Miss  W , 

during  the  year  1912,  met  a  Mr.  and  Mrs.  M ,  Amer- 
icans, who  were  in  Paris  with  their  two  children,  a  boy 

ten  and  a  girl  twelve.     Miss  W told  them  a  story 

of  having  quarreled  with  her  family,  who  w^ere  quite 
wealthy,  and  said  she  was  seeking  a  position  that  w^ould 
bring  her  to  America.  She  produced  unquestionable  ref- 
erences,  and   returned   with  the   M family  to  the 

United  States.     After  remaining  in  their  employ  for  six 

months,  she  took  a  course  in  nursing  in  B Hospital 

in  Indianapolis.  She  graduated  from  this  nospital,  came 
to  Chicago  with  letters  of  introduction  from  the  faculty, 
and  became  engaged  here  as  governess  in  the  home  of  "a 
wealthy  family  on  Lake  Shore  Drive.  In  April,  1917,  she 
applied  to  the  Chicago  Telephone  Company  for  a  position, 
asking  to  be  sent  to  France  in  their  next  unit.  She  told 
a  confusing  story  in  reference  to  her  age,  brought  about 
a    suspicion,    which    was    followed    by    an    investigation. 

"  Mrs.  B."  was  given  the  assignment.    Miss  W gave 

up  her  position  as  governess,  took  a  room  on  the  north 
side  of  Chicago  near  Wilson  Avenue.  She  was  closely 
shadowed  night  and  day,  and  was  found  to  be  in  continual 
communication  with  doctors  and  nurses.  During  the  time 
she  was  Avaiting  to  hear  from  the  Chicago  Telephone  Com- 
pany in  reference  to  the  application  she  had  filed,  she  also 


190  THE  WEB 

filed  an  application  with  the  American  Red  Cross.  Here 
she  gave  practically  the  same  references,  and  told  the 
same  story.  Investigators  from  the  American  Red  Cross 
were  advised  by  the  Department  of  Justice  that  they  drop 
their  investigation  for  the  time  being.  **  Mrs.  B  "  proved 
that  this  woman  was  the  medium  through  which  tetanus 
germs  were  being  delivered  to  certain  doctors  and  nurses, 
who  in  turn  were  to  spreadj  them  through  our  cantonments 
and  hospitals. 

District  No.  8  lies  in  the  extreme  southern  part  of  Chi- 
cago. '*  The  Gold  Coast  "  of  this  territory,  lying  along 
**  The  Ridge,"  is  a  strictly  residential  district,  but  a 
veritable  melting-pot  of  foreigners  has  sprung  up  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  mammoth  factories  and  mills  in  the 
suburban  towns  of  Kensington,  West  Pullman,  Roseland, 
Riverdale  and  South  Chicago  proper,  east  of  the  Southern 
Division  Gold  Coast.  In  this  modern  Babel  there  are  fifty 
or  sixty  different  nationalities.  Even  a  short  season  with 
such  a  racial  hodge-podge  as  exists  in  and  around  Ken- 
sington is  almost  equivalent  to  a  trip  around  the  world. 
Practically  the  only  work  in  this  community  (Districts 
41  and  47)  consisted  of  draft  evasions  and  pro-Germans. 
The  last  named  were  kindly  but  positively  reminded  that 
our  country  was  at  war.  The  operatives  in  this  Gold 
Coast  district  were  practically  all  business  men,  being 
recruited  from  banks,  business  houses,  schools  and  the 
ministry.  It  was  no  uncommon  thing  to  have  two  min- 
isters, one  of  them  a  leading  *'  dry  exponent,"  go  out 
with  a  squad  of  men  through  saloons  and  pool-rooms, 
picking  up  suspects  and  evaders.  During  the  four-day 
raid  in  July,  one  of  the  captains  working  out  of  Draft 
Board  No.  22  remarked :  *  *  I  just  sent  out  the  vice-presi- 
dent of  our  bank.  I  commanded  him  to  look  up  one  of 
these  draft  cases  and  he  went  right  to  it  without  question. 
That  man  holds  the  mortgage  on  my  home,  and  I  am  boss- 
ing him  around  as  though  he  were  my  office  boy!  " 

Another  captain  tells  something  more  of  this  foreign 
part  of  the  city.  Districts  39,  40,  42,  46  of  the  South  Divi- 
sion. This  comprises  the  large  territory  on  the  lake,  at 
the  extreme  southern  end  of  the  city,  and  has  in  it  a  large 
harbor  and  river  which  is  lined  with  elevators,  shipyards, 


THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO  191 

and  important  steel  industries  of  all  kinds.  The  popula- 
tion is  mostly  of  foreign  origin,  anj^thing  from  a  descendant 
of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  to  a  Tartar  from  Siberia.  Poles, 
Austrians,  Serbs,  Swedes,  Germans  and  Italians  predomi- 
nate, and  many  of  the  A.  P.  L.  operatives  were  recruited 
from  this  source,  thereby  giving  access  to  all  tongues.  This 
division  captain  says: 

The  magnitude  of  the  shipping  and  the  enormous  steel  in- 
dustries, together  with  a  population  of  from  ten  to  twenty 
thousand  aliens,  has  rightly  given  this  district  the  reputation 
of  being  one  of  the  most  diflEicult  in  Chicago.  Thousands  of 
these  people  speak  no  English,  and  are  living  here  under  for- 
eign customs.  Two  local  draft  boards  are  in  this  district,  19 
and  20,  and  naturally  many  cases  of  draft  evasion  were  found. 
After  the  first  general  registration,  we  were  called  upon  to  in- 
vestigate about  1,200  cases  under  this  head,  a  large  percentage 
of  them  being  cases  of  men  who  were  really  willing  to  comply 
with  the  regulations,  but  who  had  been  badly  advised  by  their 
more  erudite  countrymen.  As  we  always  have  a  large  "float- 
ing population,"  we  naturally  experienced  much  trouble  in 
tracing  this  class. 

That  small  things  often  lead  to  large  affairs,  we  discovered 
many  times.  One  night  a  Pole  came  home,  went  over  to  the 
side  of  the  room,  took  a  large  crucifix  from  the  wall,  broke  it 
across  his  knee,  and  told  his  wife  who  stared  at  him  big-eyed 

with  horror,  that  that  thing  was  no  good  any  more 

and  that  he  had  no  place  for  it.  The  woman,  who  like  most 
of  her  nationality,  was  intensely  religious,  was  quick  to  see 
that  her  man  was  not  drunk,  and  was  shrewd  enough  to  deter- 
mine to  find  the  cause  of  his  action.  On  quizzing  him,  she 
found  he  had  joined  a  new  Polish  Church  which  taught  many 
new  things,  so  she  asked  if  she  could  not  go  to  that  church. 
He  took  her  there,  and  she  learned  of  the  notorious  Pastor 
Russell  and  his  teachings,  heard  the  doctrines  of  non-resistance 
preached,  and  learned  of  a  service  to  be  held  to  persuade  young 
men  never  to  fight  or  shed  blood  under  any  circumstances. 
She  reported  what  she  learned,  and  made  such  a  positive  and 
specific  affidavit,  that  we  resolved  to  see  how  much  truth  it 
contained.  So,  when  we  discovered  that  services  were  being 
held  in  their  church,  and  that  the  congregation  contained  a 
great  many  young  men  of  draft  age,  evidently  Poles,  we  took 
a  chance  and  called  the  wagon. 

We  arrested  the  entire  congregation  during  the  services, 
confiscated   copies   of   "The  Finished   Mystery,"  a  proscribed 


192  THE  WEB 

book,  and  practically  moved  the  contents  of  the  church  to  the 
police  station.  Here  we  found  much  seditious  literature,  and 
obtained  statements  from  many  of  the  congregation,  which 
were  sufficient  to  cause  quite  a  stir.  At  present,  seven  of  the 
leaders  of  this  church  from  Brooklyn  are  sojourning  at  Fort 
Leavenworth.  We  feel,  here  in  southern  Chicago,  that  the 
breaking  of  that  crucifix  led  to  a  nation-wide  investigation 
of  a  dangerous  propaganda. 

This  same  captain,  in  closing  his  report,  makes  the  fol- 
lowing observation: 

Some  of  the  striking  phases  of  this  work  are  the  real  friend- 
ships engendered  by  otir  associations  with  each  other.  Here 
the  measure  of  a  man  is  his  loyalty  and  sincerity,  his  judg- 
ment, his  grit,  and  his  personal  sacrifice.  When  you  can  find 
as  many  real  and  true  Americans  as  this  organization  con- 
tains, you  need  never  have  worries  as  to  whether  this  country 
is  going  to  be  safe. 

Central  District  of  Chicago  is  that  important  region  cov- 
ering the  great  business  district,  out  of  which  some  four 
hundred  men,  under  four  captains,  regularly  worked  all 
over  the  city.  This  is  not  one  of  the  residence  districts, 
so  that  the  squad  of  operatives  who  reported  to  this 
branch  were  far  scattered  throughout  the  city  for  most  of 
the  twenty-four  hours.  The  personnel  of  this  district 
embraced  lawyers,  doctors,  bankers,  printers,  dry  goods 
merchants,  insurance  men,  mechanics,  railway  trainmen, 
traveling  salesmen,  actors,  and  all  kinds  of  employed  per- 
sons. A  great  many  members  belonged  to  the  prominent 
clubs  of  Chicago,  There  were  interpreters  Avho  understood 
all  of  the  continental  languages.  There  were  both  rich 
men  and  poor  men  included  in  this  membership.  There 
were  boys  in  the  twenties  and  men  of  sixty-five.  It  had 
come  to  be  the  practice  of  all  the  interlocking  branches  of 
our  Governmental  defensive  organizations  to  call  up  Cen- 
tral District  for  men  needed  on  some  particular  work.  It 
had  been  the  headquarters  squad,  and  had  sent  men  all 
over  Northern  Illinois,  and  sometimes  out  of  the  State. 

There  was  a  school  of  instruction  for  new  operatives  in 
this  district  in  which  new  men  are  taught  the  elements 
of  the  League  work,  the  elements  of  espionage  laws,  and 


THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO  193 

other  war  measures.  They  were  instructed,  also,  in  the 
fundamentals  of  shadow  work ;  the  details  of  the  selective 
service  regulations ;  the  principles  of  law  and  evidence,  and 
other  subjects  proper  to  the  activities  of  the  League. 
There  were  seven  words  taught  to  every  operative,  apply- 
ing equally  well  to  complaints  and  to  reports  —  guide 
words  in  investigations.  If  these  seven  words  were  borne 
in  mind  at  the  time  of  making  complaint  or  investigations, 
or  in  writing  up  the  report,  an  operative  would  be  fairly 
well  assured  of  embodving  the  information  -desired.  These 
words  are:  ''Who,'"  ''Which,"  "What,"  "Why," 
"  When,"  "  How,"  and  "  Witnesses." 

Every  care  was  exercised  by  the  operative  not  to 
approach  the  subject  himself  or  to  allow  him  to  know- 
he  was  being  investigated.  There  were  countless  Chicago 
Germans  and  pro-Germans  investigated,  ticketed,  tabu- 
lated, and  filed  away,  who  to  this  day  do  not  know  that 
they  ever  told  anybody  anything  about  themselves.  Many 
of  these  Prussianized  Chicagoans  to-day  wear  heavy  frowns 
and  look  aggrieved. 

In  order  to  save  his  time,  each  operative  was  taught 
how  to  use  the  regular  city  channels  of  information.  If 
he  got  a  name  without  any  address,  he  was  taught  to  go 
to  the  nearest  telephone  directory  or  city  directory.  Some- 
times a  telephone  number  was  known  and  the  name  of  the 
party  unknown.  Reference  to  the  numerical  telephone 
directory  sometimes  covered  this.  Sometimes  the  business 
of  the  subject  might  be  known  and  his  address  unknown, 
in  Avhich  case  it  might  be  found  by  reference  to  the  classi- 
fied business  telephone  directory,  or  the  city  directory.  A 
subject  might  be  doing  business  in  the  city  and  livins:  in 
the  suburbs.  Countless  suburban  telephone  directories  were 
always  in  the  central  office  for  such  reference. 

In  every  great  city  a  directory  gives  a  concise  arrange- 
ment of  the  personnel  of  the  various  departments  of  the 
U.  S.  Government;  state  and  federal  officials,  their  titles, 
their  room  numbers,  their  buildings,  can  be  found  in  this 
way.  In  this  way,  also,  all  the  officers  of  the  city  govern- 
ment can  be  found ;  the  rooms  where  the  court  of  this  or 
that  judge  are  located,  etc.  The  state  offices,  including 
hospitals,  etc.,  can  be  found  in  these  directories. 


194  THE  WEB 

A  wide  range  of  useful  information  concerning  the  city 
and  its  environs  was  given  to  novitiate  operatives  in  this 
Central  District.  This  information  was  of  incalculable 
benefit  to  new  members  of  the  League  when  once  their 
active  investigating  work  began.  The  A.  P.  L.  training 
school  was  a  very  important  cog  in  the  Chicago  machine, 
and  made  it  possible  for  the  district  to  do  more  work  per 
capita  and  better  work  than  would  otherwise  have  been 
possible.  Indeedj,  the  training  for  an  operative  was  not 
bad  training  for  a  newspaper  reporter.  What  is  said 
regarding  this  work  in  the  Chicago  district  might  apply 
in  very  considerable  part  also  to  the  work  in  other  large 
communities. 

Operatives  were  obliged  to  take  all  sorts  of  roles.  At 
times  they  acted  as  waiters  or  clerks,  and  sometimes  they 
impersonated  lawbreakers  themselves.  One  of  them  suc- 
ceeded in  impersonating  an  I.  W.  W.  so  well  that  at  a 
meeting  he  was  covering  he  was  asked  to  contribute  to 
the  I.  W.  W.  cause  —  and  did  so !  Another  ingratiated 
himself  into  the  good  offices  of  the  I.  W.  W.'s  so  well  that 
he  was  permitted  to  take  notes  at  one  of  their  meetings 
with  the  understanding  that  he  was  a  newspaper  man 
representing  one  of  their  own  papers. 

The  Southwest  Division  in  Chicago  is  only  another  cor- 
ner of  darkest  Europe.  In  this  section,  however,  were 
located  a  good  many  foreign-born  operatives,  who  affiliated 
well  in  that  region  and  did  their  work  thoroughly  until 
the  closing  days  of  the  war.  Their  grist  included  some 
curious  and  interesting  cases. 

There  was,  for  instance,  a  certain  person  called  Panco, 
the  Fry  Cook,  long  wanted  by  the  Department  of  Justice 
for  anarchistic  and  seditious  utterances.  The  Department 
had  been  hunting  Panco  for  months  but  could  not  find 
him.  Four  Southwest  A.  P.  L.  operatives  went  after  Panco. 
Two  of  them  became  members  in  a  waiters'  union  in  which 
Panco  was  known  to  belong.  They  could  not  find  their 
man,  who  did  not  seem  to  report  often  at  the  headquarters 
of  that  union;  so  they  gave  out  reports  everywhere  that 
Panco  was  a  dead  beat  and  would  not  pay  his  union  dues ! 
This  came  to  Panco 's  ears.  He  showed  up  at  headquarters 
to  deny  this  impeachment.     He  got  thirty  years. 


THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO  195 

A  Lithuanian  lecturer  was  described  as  about  to  deliver 
a  seditious  harangue  in  the  village  of  Cicero,  near  Chicago. 
The  Southwest  Division  sent  out  several  motor  cars  with 
picked  men  ready  for  trouble.  They  found  a  hall  crowded 
with  foreigners  who  were  listening  to  a  much  bewhiskered 
man,  clad  in  shabby  tweeds,  who  was  demonstrating  at  a 
blackboard  on  a  platform,  and  was  speaking  in  some 
unknown  tongue.  At  last  one  of  the  operatives  who  had 
been  taken  along  as  an  interpreter  began  to  laugh  and 
said,  **  Let's  go  home,  fellows;  we've  got  the  old  bird 
wrong.  He  ain't  talking  anarchy;  he's  giving  a  lecture  on 
sex  control!  " 

An  unusual  amount  of  shrewdness  should  be  credited 
to  some  of  these  operatives.  It  was  a  mere  guess,  for 
instance,  on  the  part  of  such  a  man  that  the  figure  *'  8  " 
—  the  final  figure  on  a  foreign  birth  certificate  —  had  been 
changed  to  a  **  5. "  If  this  were  true,  it  meant  that  the 
suspect  w^ould  come  within  the  draft  age,  although  other- 
wise his  story  was  perfectly  straight.  Suspicion  is  not 
evidence,  so  the  Department  of  Justice  was  about  to  release 
this  man.  The  latter  had  remarked  to  someone  that  his, 
father  lived  in  Indiana.  The  operative  went  to  the  phone 
and  pretended  to  call  up  the  father  in  this  town  personally, 
w4th  the  intention  of  inducing  the  suspect  to  eavesdrop 
on  the  phone  conversation  in  the  next  room.  After  a 
while  the  operative  turned  to  the  suspect,  his  hand  over 
the  receiver,  and  said  :  * '  Well,  we  've  got  the  information 
w^e  wanted.  What  have  you  got  to  say?  "  Completely 
fooled,  the  suspect  confessed !  He  was  inducted  into  the 
army. 

A  certain  colored  draft  dodger  was  discovered  to  belong 
to  a  staff  of  colored  waiters  in  a  certain  hotel.  The  head 
waiter,  very  pompous  and  very  shiny,  refused  to  allow  a 
search.  The  A.  P.  L.  declared  that  if  the  suspect  was  not 
forthcoming  he  would  arrest  every  waiter  in  the  place  and 
carry  them  off  in  the  wagon.  This  brought  out  the  sus- 
pect.    He's  in  the  Army  now. 

A  certain  Mrs.  L called  the  Red  Cross  a  bunch  of 

grafters  and  crooks,  said  Ambassador  Gerard  was  a  traitor 
and  a  liar,  said  the  President  was  the  greatest  traitor  since 
Jefferson  Davis  and  made  other  interesting  remarks.    She 


196  THE  WEB 

repeated  these  statements  before  a  U.  S.  Marshal  and  was 
held  in  $5,000  bond.  Then  she  became  more  abusive  and 
was  held  in  $5,000  additional.  She  kept  on  until  her  bond 
amounted  to  $25,000,  and  was  then  asked  if  she  didj  not 
think  it  was  time  to  stop  talking*.  She  did.  As  she  could 
not  raise  the  bail,  she  was  sent  to  Cook  County  jail,  where 
she  remained  till  the  Armistice  was  signed. 

Chicago  at  times  handled  other  live  stock  than  that 
commonly  seen  in  the  stockyards.  On  August  5,  1918, 
the  sixth  enemy  alien  special  to  Fort  Oglethorpe  carried 
fifteen  persons  for  internment.  The  train  was  to  pick  up 
eight  more  at  Indianapolis.  On  the  following  day,  it  seems, 
the  Chicago  Symphony  Orchestra  had  seven  members  who 
groaned  while  they  were  playing  the  Star  Spangled  Ban- 
ner. They  explained  their  frame  of  mindi  before  a  judge, 
who  taught  them  very  much  better  manners.     On  August 

7,  Lieutenant  Friederick  Walter  S of  the  German 

army,  who  for  a  month  had  worn  a  United  States  uniform 
at  Camp  Grant,  had  his  naturalization  papers  revoked,  and 
got  interned  for  the  period  of  the  war.  On  September  1, 
among  ten  aliens  shipped  to  Fort  Oglethorpe,  one  was  a 
munition  manufacturer  who  had  been  just  at  the  point  of 
receiving  a  very  fat  United  States  order.  He  had  been 
filling  contracts  for  Germany  before  we  went  to  war. 

On  November  17,  1918,  the  radicals  and  socialists  of 
Chicago  held  a  great  meeting  in  the  Coliseum.  There 
were  about  12,000  present.  It  is  not  necessary  to  go  into 
details  regarding  their  action  beyond  saying  that  they  gave 
over  the  Chicago  Socialist  party,  body  and  breeches,  to 
Bolshevism.  Here  in  Chicago,  one  of  our  centers  of  the 
civilization  of  America,  these  men  declared  themselves  in 
sympathy  with  Russian  anarchy.  In  America,  the  land  of 
hope,  they  declared  themselves  in  sympathy  with  hope- 
lessness, despair  and  destruction.  Some  of  the  speeches 
were  made  in  the  German  language  —  a  tongue  which  we 
ought  to  forbid  to  be  used  in  public,  on  our  streets,  in  our 
printed  pages,  and  over  our  telephone  wires  to-day.  These 
speakers,  in  the  Hun  tongue,  openly  deplorc'd  contribu- 
tions to  our  War  funds.  They  hailed  with  much  applause 
such  speakers  as  Victor  Berger,  who  publicly  gloried  in 
the   four  indictments   pending   over   him.     In   short,   the 


THE  STORY  OF  CHICAGO  197 

meeting  came  dangerously  close  to  being  disloyal.  We 
shall  be  so  mild  as  this  in  comment,  since  being  a  member 
of  the  Socialist  party  is  not  per  se  a  disloyal  act,  and  not 
all  Socialists  are  of  the  radical  wing. 

Much  pleased  with  the  sound  of  their  own  voices,  these 
gentlemen  now  concluded  to  hold  a  public  street  parade, 
with  red  banners  and  the  usual  Bolshevist  appurtenances. 
They  went  to  Acting  Chief  of  Police  Alcock,  and  asked  for 
a  permit  to  parade  in  the  streets.  They  said  they  wanted 
to  carry  the  red  flag,  and  they  asked  police  protection. 
Note  the  reply  the  Chief  of  Police  made  to  them: 

My  friends,  I  won't  give  you  police  protection  at  all,  nor 
try  to  do  so.  Do  you  know  what  you  are  up  against?  There 
are  12,000  A.  P.  L.  men  in  this  village  who  are  opposed  to  this 
sort  of  thing,  and  my  men  don't  want  to  get  in  wrong  with 
any  12,000  A.  P.  L.  men.  We  work  with  those  people  and  not 
against  them.  They  work  with  us  and  not  against  us.  Be- 
lieve me,  the  best  thing  you  folks  can  do  is  to  cut  out  the 
parade. 

The  representatives  of  the  proposed  parade  could  not 
get  back  to  their  headquarters  fast  enough.  They  cut  out 
the  parade. 

As  late  as  November  21,  Chicago  was  still  running  enemy 
alien  specials  for  Fort  Oglethorpe.  This  consignment 
included  a  cook,  also  a  Highland  Park  riding  master  who 
had  been  over-curious  in  regard  to  matters  adjacent  to 
Fort  Sheridan.  Twenty  others  were  to  be  picked  up  later 
down  the  line  —  all  after  the  Armistice  had  been  signed. 

On  November  23,  Fred  I ,  said  to  resemble  the 

CroA\Ti  Prince  very  much  in  his  personal  appearance,  was 
fined  five  thousand  dollars,  whether  for  seditious  utter- 
ances or  for  his  resemblance  to  the  Crowai  Prince  does  not 
appear,  and  is  immaterial.     Either  would  be  enough. 

On  November  26,  nine  men  were  given  free  transporta- 
tion from  Chicago  to  Fort  Leavenworth.  One  of  these  was 
a  Dunkard  preacher  who  got  ten  years  for  saying,  ''I'd 
kill  a  man  rather  than  buy  a  Liberty  bond."  He  will  have 
time  to  think  that  proposition  over. 

These  straws  will  show  well  which  way  the  wind  blew 
in  Chicago  for  the  last  year  or  so.     Much  to  the  disap- 


198  THE  WEB 

pointment  of  the  Kaiser  andi  one  or  two  mayors,  Chicago 
seems  to  be  but  very  imperfectly  Germanized  after  all. 
As  for  setting  down  the  full  tale  of  the  A.  P.  L.  activities 
in  this  city,  it  would  be  a  thing  impossible  of  accomplish- 
ment. The  w^orld  knows  how  Chicago  does  the  things  she 
considers  proper  to  have  done.  The  American  Protective 
League  in  Chicago  worked  in  the  well-known  and  well- 
accredited  Chicago  w^ay.  To  thank  the  men  who  did  this 
work,  or  even  to  mention  their  names,  would  cheapen  them 
and  their  work.  They  did  not  ask  thanks.  They  w^ere 
Americans  and  were  citizens. 


\ 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  STORY  OF  NEW  YORK 

The  Focus  of  German  International  Espionage  —  Center 
of  Foreign  Population  —  The  Great  Plots  —  Governmental 
Concentration  —  How  the  A.  P.  L.  Web  Helped  Collect 
Traitors  —  Details  of  the  Organization  —  A  Metropolis 
Loved  by  a  Country, 

The  great  American  metropolis  was  the  storm-center  of 
America  in  the  war.  The  heart  of  the  great  and  intricate 
system  of  German  espionage,  the  controlling  financial  body 
of  Germany's  spy  army,  was  there;  the  treacherous  diplo- 
macy of  Germany  centered  there.  Moreover,  our  shipments 
of  men,  munitions  and  supplies  largely  centered  there,  and 
that  was  the  general  point  of  departure  of  our  troops  bound 
overseas.  Naturally,  therefore,  our  Government  concen- 
trated in  and  around  this  danger  spot  its  strongest  pro- 
tective measures  for  our  troops  and  their  supplies.  Lit- 
erally, it  was  plot  and  counterplot  in  New  York ;  w^ar  and 
counter  war;  espionage  and  counter  espionage. 

Such  a  story  as  that  cannot  be  covered  by  the  printed 
page.  No  volume  can  describe  New  York's  part  in  the 
war,  for  that  man  does  not  live  who  knows  or  ever  will 
know  all  that  went  on  in  Ncav  York  in  war  time.  New 
York  herself  never  will  know  how  she  was  endangered 
and  how  she  was  protected. 

Until  war  broke  out.  New  York  was  much  like  London. 
Grown  indifferent  to  her  vast  foreign  element,  she  was 
disposed  to  let  these  people  meet  and  march,  preach  and 
pray  and  then  go  home  again,  red  flag  and  all.  No  great 
world  city  can  have  a  homogeneous  population,  nor  can 
any  such  population  be  governed  as  a  whole.  New  York 
accepted  the  fact  that  she  was  one  of  the  centers  of  the 
world's  transient  life.  Her  entire  business  prosperity  is 
built  up  on  the  transient  trade.    With  an  amused  indiffer- 

199 


200  THE  WEB 

ence,  New  York  allowed  her  visitors  to  meet  an-d  march, 
preach  and  pray,  amuse  themselves  so  long  as  they  liked, 
so  long  as  they  paid  for  their  privilege  of  passing  through. 
She  had  long  since  ceased  to  analyze  her  population,  but 
has  entertained  it  instead,  regarding  it  with  neither  fear, 
shame,  pride  nor  alarm.     She  was  truly  a  metropolis. 

But  when  war  came,  New  York  realized  that  she  was 
not  only  a  metropolis  but  a  commercial  center  and  a  place 
where  human  beings  lived.  She  had  tall  buildings.  A 
brick  shot  off  the  top  of  the  Woolworth  Building  would 
certainly  jar  a  man  below  if  it  fell  upon  him;  and  the 
"Woolworth  or  other  buildings  might  easily  be  hit  by  naval 
guns  of  a  hostile  fleet  lying  comfortably  off  shore.  The 
funk  of  New  York  andi  other  eastern  cities  was  never  felt 
at  all  in  the  central  portion  of  the'  country.  "When  the 
submarines  began  to  show  what  they  could  do,  New  York 
awoke  to  a  sense  of  real  danger.  She  faced  the  fact  that, 
although  she  was  foreign  in  population,  she  must  become 
American  if  America  was  to  endure.  Then  New  York 
turned  her  face  no  longer  toward  Europe,  but  toward 
America  and  since  that  time  has  been  more  beloved  by 
America  than  ever  she  was  before. 

It  was  imperative  that  the  vast  protective  agencies  of 
the  national  Government  should  focus  here  at  the  gateway 
to  the  Atlantic.  Military  Intelligence,  Naval  Intelligence, 
Cable  Censorship,  Mail  Censorship,  the  Department  of  Jus- 
tice, War  Trade  Intelligence  —  each  of  these  and  all  the 
various  war  boards  and  branches  of  war  activities  must 
center  in  the  metropolis  ine^dtably.  The  machinery  for 
protecting  the  invaluable  shipping  of  men  and  munitions 
was  as  elaborate  and  perfect  as  the  Government  could 
make  it.  Every  force  was  rushed  to  the  danger  line  in 
New  York. 

In  so  complicated  and  overburdened  a  series  of  Govern- 
ment enterprises  it  early  became  obvious  that  there  was 
need  for  an  auxiliary  such  as  the  American  Protective 
League.  The  organization  was  duly  made  and  widely 
extended.  It  was  natural  none  the  less  that  it  should  be 
very  much  overshadowed  by  the  greater  volume  and 
greater  importance  of  the  agencies  of  the  Government's 
judicial  and  war  Avork,  which  were  massed  in  the  great 


THE  STORY  OF  NEW  YORK  201 

city.  But  the  A.  P.  L.  was  there,  active  as  elsewhere,  and 
perhaps  more  useful  than  in  any  other  city  in  the  country, 
because  it  had  to  do  there  with  larger  risks  than  offered  in 
any  other  city. 

In  the  period  of  its  work  in  New  York  up  to  the  time 
of  the  Armistice,  the  A.  P.  L.  division  was  thought  to 
have  covered  some  300,000  cases  in  all,  which  is  far  and 
away  the  record  for  America.  Such  figures  as  these  mean, 
of  course,  that  to  single  out  any  one  case  or  a  few  cases 
would  be  only  to  repeat  cases  the  like  of  which  already 
have  been  described  for  other  points ;  and  besides,  it  would 
not  in  any  sense  give  an  idea  of  the  extent  of  the  data 
handed  over  to  the  United  States  departments  on  A.  P.  L. 
initiative  or  on  government  request.  It  seems  wiser  to  let 
the  great  national  or  international  cases,  which  have  be- 
come publicly  prominent  through  Government  activity, 
stand  for  the  minor  story  of  New  York. 

These  causes  celchres  have  in  great  part  been  made  pub- 
lic in  the  newspapers, — and  in  a  great  many  instances  made 
yet  more  public  by  the  testimony  of  the  witnesses  of  the 
Federal  Attorneys  before  the  Overman  Senate  Committee 
in  Washington.  It  certainly  could  be  said  of  the  great 
city  that  she  produced  more  sensations  in  espionage  than 
all  the  rest  of  the  country  combined.  A.  P.  L.  was  not  con- 
cerned in  all  these  matters,  although  in  some  of  them  it 
played  its  part. 

The  first  chief  of  the  New  York  Division  was  a  lawyer, 
John  H.  Hendrick,  who  had  charge  of  the  small  beginnings 
in  April,  1917,  but  who  in  the  following  month,  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Richmond  Levering,  special  agent  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice.  Mr.  Bielaski,  Chief  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau 
of  Investigation,  approved  this  appointment,  Mr.  Levering 
later  becoming  Major  in  the  U.  S.  Army.  In  early  June, 
Mr.  E.  S.  Underbill,  an  Agent  of  the  Department  of  Jus- 
tice, was  detailed  to  take  charge.  The  work  now  began 
to  grow  somewhat.  In  October,  1917,  League  affairs  were 
placed  in  the  hands  of  an  operating  committee.  On  Janu- 
ary 3,  1918,  the  committee  was  abolished,  and  Mr.  E.  H. 
Rushmore  was  appointed  Acting  Chief.  In  May,  1918,  Mr. 
Rushmore  became  Chief  of  the  Division. 

New  York  Division,  like  others,  at  first  was  organized 


202  THE  WEB 

along  trade  lines,  which  was  found  to  be  impracticable. 
Then  the  Southern  and  Eastern  Federal  Districts  of  New 
York  were  divided  into  zones.  The  Borough  of  Manhattan 
contained  eight  zones,  each  under  an  inspector.  The  Bor- 
ough of  the  Bronx  was  placed  in  charge  of  a  deputy  chief, 
and  was  divided  into  nine  sub-divisions.  The  Borough  of 
Brookl^TL  and  Long  Island  w^as  also  in  charge  of  a  deputy 
chief,  and  subdivided  into  eight  districts,  each  in  charge 
of  an  inspector.  The  outlying  districts  w^ere  formed  into 
zones,  using  county  lines  as  boundaries,  and  each  of  these 
zones  also  was  under  the  charge  of  an  inspector.  All  the 
inspectors  appointed  a  sufficient  number  of  captains,  who 
had  under  them  lieutenants  in  charge  of  squads. 

It  will  be  seen  that  this  is  rather  a  complicated  organiza- 
tion, and  indeed  it  could  not  be  swung  as  a  unit  in  the 
matter  of  its  records,  because  of  the  diverse  reporting  sys- 
tem required. 

The  work  of  the  Division  Headquarters  on  Nassau  Street 
was  efficiently  handled  by  twenty  volunteer  meihbers  who 
acted  as  Bureau  Chiefs  in  the  matter  of  assignment  of  work. 
Headquarters  had  about  fifty  file  clerics  and  stenographers 
in  its  force,  and  in  addition  operated  six  zone  'offices, 
all  of  which  were  used  exclusively  for  these  zone  workers, 
and  all  of  them  fully  equipped  with  office  facilities  and 
help.  The  Division  expended  something  over  $75,000,  all 
of  which  was  raised  by  individual  subscriptions  of  mem- 
bers of  the  League  and  their  friends. 

A.  P.  L.  in  New  York  had  all  sorts  of  cases.  Chief  Rush- 
more  thinks  about  the  most  important  was  that  concerned 

with  A.  L ,  intimate  friend  of  Jeremiah  O'Leary,  on 

trial  for  treason.  This  case  was  turned  over  to  the  League 
by  Division  Superintendent  DeWoody  of  D.  J.,  who  asked 
the  covering  of  all  railroad  stations,  ferries  and  steamship 
lines  or  other  possible  means  of  entry  into  New  York  in 

order   that   L might    be    apprehended.      A    rather 

meagre  description  of  the  suspect  was  given.    Information 

had  reached  the  Department  that  L had  left  New 

York  when  O'Leary  forfeited  his  trial  bond  and  did  not 

appear  in  court  for  trial  on  charge  of  treason.     L 

was  thought  to  be  on  his  way  back  to  New  York.  A.  P.  L. 
put  out  about  one  hundred  operatives  on  this  case,  and 


THE  STORY  OF  NEW  YORK  203 

stopped  hundreds  of  passengers  who  might  have  resembled 
him  and  asked  them  to  identify  themselves.  This  came  to 
nothing.    Other  operatives  interviewed  the  man 's  wife  and 

were  convinced  L was  in  town.     An  operative  of 

A.  P.  L.,  accompanied  by  a  D.  J.  man,  therefore  shadowed 

one  of  L- 's  intimate  friends,  with  the  result  that 

L himself  finally  was  located  in  Brooklyn  and  appre- 
hended. He  was  taken  to  the  New  York  office  of  the  De- 
partment of  Justice  and  there  gave  information  as  to 
O'Leary's  whereabouts.  The  latter  man,  who  had  jumped 
his  bail  bond,  was  immediately  apprehended  in  the  West 
and  brought  on  to  New  York,  where,  at  the  last  writing, 
he  was  waiting  trial  on  the  charge  of  treason. 

The  A.  P.  L.  shadow  work  in  the  foregoing  case  was  so 
good  as  to  elicit  a  letter  of  praise  from  D.  J.  in  Washing- 
ton to  Mr.  DeWoody.  The  latter  disclaimed  the  credit  and 
gave  it  to  the  A.  P.  L.  operative  'Svho  performed  a  re- 
markable feat  in  a  continued  and  difficult  shadow." 

The  Division  Chief  himself  writes  something  regarding 
a  matter  which  has  brought  up  considerable  other  writing 
at  different  times  from  many  different  sources. 

The  story  of  the  much  discussed  slacker  raid  In  New  York 
Is  known  to  every  one,  but  we  might  give  some  details.  In 
August,  1918,  Mr.  Bielaski,  in  Washington,  advised  the  Na- 
tional Directors  of  A.  P.  L.  that  he  was  anxious  to  conduct  a 
New  York  slacker  raid  similar  to  that  in  Chicago.  The  Na- 
tional Directors  conferred  with  Mr.  De  Woody,  the  D.  J.  Agent 
in  New  York,  who  talked  the  matter  over  with  Martin  Conboy, 
Director  of  the  Draft  for  New  York  City.  The  National  Di- 
rectors also  went  to  the  New  York  Division  of  A.  P.  L.  and 
left  a  tentative  plan  based  upon  the  Chicago  arrangement, 
which  was  submitted  to  Mr.  DeWoody,  who,  later,  with  these 
others,  worked  out  a  plan  for  the  raid  which  was  to  come  off 
on  September  3,  4  and  5. 

Arrangements  were  made  to  obtain  the  Sixty-ninth  Regi- 
ment Armory  in  New  York  and  the  Twenty-third  Regiment 
Armory  in  Brooklyn,  and  about  1,000  sailors  and  750  soldiers 
from  posts  in  New  York  City  were  obtained  for  assistance  in 
the  raids.  Two  American  Protective  League  operatives  were 
detailed  to  each  of  the  one  hundred  and  eighty-nine  local 
boards  in  New  York,  and  two  to  each  police  station.  There 
were  seventy-five  operatives  on  duty  in  the  Armories  in  New 


204  THE  WEB 

York  and  about  fifty  in  Brooklyn,  There  were  ten  special 
agents  of  D.  J.  in  Brooklyn  and  twenty  in  New  York.  Mr. 
DeWoody  prepared  printed  instructions  to  be  used  by  the  sail- 
ors, soldiers  and  A,  P.  L.  operatives  in  the  work. 

The  system  used  on  the  streets  was  to  interrogate  a  man, 
and  ask  for  his  registration  card  and  his  final  classification 
card.  If  he  had  none,  he  was  taken  to  the  nearest  police  sta- 
tion, where  he  was  questioned  further  by  the  operatives  in 
charge,  and  if  thought  to  be  a  delinquent,  was  then  sent  by  a 
motor  car  to  the  armory  to  be  held.  From  that  point  his  local 
board  was  communicated  with  by  telephone  or  telegraph,  and 
the  true  status  of  the  man  obtained  at  the  earliest  possible 
moment.  In  these  raids,  there  were  apprehended  21,402  men, 
of  whom  756  were  inducted  into  the  service.  There  were 
found  2,485  men  who  were  delinquents  from  their  local  boards. 

Up  till  December  11,  1918,  there  were  45,150  filed  cases 
of  a  general  nature  in  the  New  York  Division:  3,610  civil 
service  case,  2,920  passport  vises,  471  passport  cases, 
2,507  overseas  investigations,  2,539  investigations  of  offi- 
cers' commissions,  and  29,680  cases  connected  with  selec- 
tive service  matters.     This  makes  a  total  of  86,877  cases. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  above  numbers  apply  to  folder 
numbers  only,  and  many  folders  contain  more  than  one 
case,  some  of  them  as  high  as  250  cases.  For  instance,  the 
investigations  of  a  jury  panel  would  be  carried  all  in  one 
folder  under  the  name  of  the  trial  on  which  that  jury  was 
to  sit.  The  figures  in  selective  service  matters  are  the 
actual  number  of  cases  turned  over  to  the  League  at  the 
time  they  started  work  with  the  various  local  boards. 
Subsequent  to  this  date  the  A.  P.  L.  officers  in  charge  of 
the  work  at  the  various  boards  were  given  thousands  of 
cases  which  they  reported  directly  to  the  board,  there 
being  no  file  in  the  office  in  such  instances.  The  A.  P.  L. 
Chief  of  New  York  therefore  thinks  it  a  very  conservative 
estimate  to  say  that  the  number  of  individuals  investigated 
by  the  New  York  Division  would  run  between  300,000  and 
400,000.  All  these  cases  in  the  New  York  office  system 
were  filed  alphabetically  under  the  name  of  the  person  or 
firm  to  be  investigated;  for  that  reason  definite  figures 
could  not  be  given  in  any  summary.  As  League  operatives 
became  better  acquainted  with  the  Chairmen  of  the  Draft 
Boards,  more  and  more  cases  would  be  turne-d  in  directly 


THE  STORY  OF  NEW  YORK  205 

to  the  Local  Boards,  which  left  the  files  incomplete  also  in 
cases  of  this  character. 

On  Long  Island,  near  New  York,  there  were  several  large 
military  camps,  including  Camp  Mills  and  Camp  Upton, 
and  several  aviation  fields.  The  A.  P.  L.  zone  inspectors 
in  charge  of  Nassau  and  Sufl:'olk  Counties,  together  with 
the  Deputy  Chief,  in  charge  of  Long  Island,  cooperated 
closely  with  the  Intelligence  officers  of  these  camps. 
A.  P.  L.  quite  often  was  of  assistance  in  locating  deserters 
from  these  camps,  it  being  the  usual  thing  for  an  officer 
to  telegraph  A.  P..  L.  to  pick  up  the  pursuit. 

A.  P.  L.  also  investigated  a  great  many  cases  for  the 
camp  authorities  at  Camp  Wadsworth,  Spartanburg,  South 
Carolina,  because  this  camp  was  occupied  for  some  time 
by  the  New  York  National  Guard.  Sometimes  the  League 
would  be  asked  to  investigate  the  statement  of  a  man  who 
wanted  a  furlough  because  his  family  in  New  York  was 
sick.  A  great  many  fraudulent  requests  of  this  kind  were 
discovered.  The  War  Department  detailed  a  special  officer 
to  handle  cases  of  deception  of  this  character,  and  A.  P.  L. 
turned  over  to  him  a  great  deal  of  information  of  this 
nature  as  well  as  many  reports  which  had  come  in  to 
A.  P.  L.  of  the  sale  of  liquor  to  men  in  uniform.  Captain 
Peiffer,  the  officer  in  charge  of  this  work,  at  one  time  inves- 
tigated some  thirty  hotels  in  New  York  City.  For  more 
than  two  weeks  these  hotels  were  covered  by  A.  P.  L. 
operators.  This  officer  had  a  lieutenant  detailed  to  watch 
liquor  and  vice  matters  on  Long  Island,  who  made  his 
headquarters  at  Hempstea-d.  A.  P.  L.  officers  cooperated 
with  this  lieutenant  in  every  way  and  gave  him  much  assist- 
ance in  closing  up  saloons  and  hotels  that  came  within  the 
five  mile  limit  of  the  various  camps. 

Military  Intelligence  Division,  of  the  General  Staff,  sent 
a  great  many  character  and  loyalty  investigations  of  over- 
seas cases,  officers'  investigation  cases  and  a  large  variety 
of  cases  of  special  investigation  of  both  positive  and  nega- 
tive nature,  to  A.  P.  L.  in  New  York.  A  separate  depart- 
ment was  established  in  New  York  headquarters  exclu- 
sively to  handle  the  cases  coming  to  New  York  Military 
Intelligence  in  Washington.  Within  the  seven  months 
ending  December  11,  1918,  the  New  York  office  received 


206  THE  WEB 

5,046  cases  of  the  types  above  mentioned.  Perhaps  a  man 
going  overseas  would  give  from  one  to  ten  references,  say 
an  average  of  four  references  to  each  case,  which  would 
mean  the  interviewing  of  more  than  20,000  individuals  at 
the  request  of  the  War  Department  in  Washington.  The 
men  who  did.  this  work  did  not  get  a  cent  for  it.  The 
territory  covered  by  the  Division  extends  from  Pough- 
keepsie.  New  York,  to  Montauk  Point,  Long  Island,  a  dis- 
tance of  about  200  miles.  The  cases  would  be  scattered 
all  over  this  territory,  and  very  often  the  same  case  would 
require  two  or  more  investigators. 

Beside  all  of  these  rather  heavy  duties  in  connection  with 
the  big  government  work,  A.  P.  L.  had  daily  requests  from 
the  Intelligence  Office  at  Governor's  Island,  the  Port  of 
Embarkation  at  Hoboken,  and  the  various  other  Intelli- 
gence Offices  in  and  around  New  York  City.  Every  pos- 
sible assistance  was  rendered)  these  various  officers.  It  was 
impossible  to  classify  all  of  this  work  in  the  files,  so  that 
the  entire  number  is  not  available. 

As  the  perfectly  interlocking  system  of  intelligence  of 
the  A.  P.  L.  in  the  great  city  became  known,  the  agents  of 
the  Department  of  Justice  and  the  officers  of  the  various 
Military  Intelligence  services  got  in  the  habit  of  calling 
on  headquarters  at  A.  P.  L.  for  all  sorts  of  information. 
Quite  often  they  would  call  regarding  some  case  which 
needed  looking  into  at  a  town  a  long  distance  away.  The 
name  of  an  A.  P.  L.  division  at  that  point  would  be  given, 
and  the  case  turned  over  to  the  latter  by  telegraph.  Thus 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  web  of  New  York,  expanded  into 
the  web  of  A.  P.  L.  all  over  America,  was  of  almost  incal- 
culable benefit  to  all  of  the  U.  S.  Departments  concerned 
in  any  way  with  the  war. 

The  New  York  office  has  conducted  some  part  of  the 
investigation  of  almost  every  alien  enemy  that  has  been 
interned  in  that  part  of  the  country.  Just  how  much  value 
the  work  of  the  League  has  had  in  these  various  intern- 
ment cases,  it  is  difficult  to  tell.  Department  of  Justice 
has  sometimes  been  rather  haughty  and  lofty  in  regard  to 
its  humbler  auxiliary.  When  New  York  A.  P.  L.  has 
inquired  of  D.  J.  as  to  the  outcome  of  a  certain  case,  some- 
times the  answer  would  be  that ' '  proper  action  will  be  taken 


THE  STORY  OF  NEW  YORK  207 

in  due  time,'*  the  inference  being  that  D.  J.  did  not  want 
to  be  bothered  by  questions.  A  like  vagueness  quite  ofteu 
enshrouded  cases  turned  over  to  Military  Intelligence. 
A.  P.  L.  might  investigate  fifty  men  for  commissions  and 
never  know  even  whether  any  of  them  got  a  commission. 

The  offices  of  the  United  States  Attorneys  in  both  the 
Southern  and  Eastern  districts  of  New  York  were  greatly 
overworked,  and  had  a  very  inadequate  staff  of  assistants. 
It  was  necessary,  in  many  instances,  for  A.  P.  L.  to  take 
cases  that  should  have  gone  to  a  Federal  Court,  before 
some  local  magistrate  on  a  disorderly  conduct  charge. 

In  brief,  the  story  of  A.  P.  L.  in  New  York  City  is  very 
satisfying  indeed.  How  fortunate  for  Military  Intelligence, 
the  Draft  Boards,  the  Department  of  Justice  and  other 
war  branches  that  they  had  an  A.  P.  L.  to  help  them  out, 
and  to  do  that  for  nothing!  Had  this  not  been  the  case, 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  these  branches  of  our  war 
activities  v/ould  also  have  broken  down  as  so  lamentably 
did  other  portions  of  our  war  work  —  ordnance,  equip- 
ment, airplane  work,  etc.,  all  of  which  suffered  from  not 
having  a  quarter  million  of  men  at  hand  to  do  the  work 
for  nothing  and  do  it  right.  The  truth  about  this  war 
never  has  been  known  and  never  will  be  printed.  A  lot" 
of  it  lies  in  the  files  of  the  A.  P.  L. 

In  the  course  of  the  last  ten  months,  according  to  the 
Military  Intelligence  Bureau,  New  York  Division  probably 
had  more  investigations  entrusted  to  it  than  would  in  peace 
times  be  made  throughout  the  entire  country.  Since  the 
A.  P.  L.  men  were  of  the  highest  type,  with  all  the  advan- 
tage of  education  and  wide  experience,  their  ready  adapta- 
bility can  be  taken  for  granted.  But  even  with  the  high 
average  of  ability  of  the  League  officers  and  operatives, 
the  notably  fine  record  of  the  New  York  Division  would 
not  have  been  possible  had  there  not  been  a  most  thorough 
and  up-to-date  business  system.  And  such  was  actually 
the  case. 

A  full  series  of  blanks,  the  use  of  special  cover  sheets, 
of  different  colors,  and  the  employment  of  case  covers  cor- 
responding to  the  cover  sheets,  so  simplified  the  filing  sys- 
tem and  the  record  of  the  case  itself  as  to  save  a  great 
deal  of  time  and  eliminate  a  great  many  mistakes.     For 


208  THE  WEB 

instance,  the  case  card  would  be  buff  in  a  case  of  a  **  com- 
mission" investigation,  green  in  an  '* overseas"  investiga- 
tion and  pink  for  special  cases.  The  card  is  kept  clipped 
to  its  cover  sheet  until  a  case  is  assigned.  "When  it  has 
been  assigned,  notation  is  made  on  the  card  and  cover 
sheet,  and  the  individual  record  card  of  the  man  to  whom 
assigned.  The  case  is  then  sent  to  the  operative,  and  the 
case  card  filed  alphabetically  under  his  name  in  the  ''out" 
box.  A  separate  record  card  is  maintained  for  each  inves- 
tigator or  district  officer.  It  is  thus  possible  to  locate  a 
case  at  once,  by  looking  up  a  name  of  the  subject  in  the 
**out"  box  of  case  cards,  and  to  locate  what  cases  are  in 
the  hands  of  any  investigator  by  looking  up  his  record 
card.  An  equally  thorough  system  was  employed  in  the 
handling  of  reports  as  they  came  in. 

Without  a  most  efficient  system  for  transacting  the  busi- 
ness of  the  League,  the  most  hopeless  confusion  must  have 
obtained  among  that  seething  mass  of  conflicting  human 
activities.  Mere  bulk  of  paper  is  an  incomprehensible 
thing,  and  no  one  who  has  not  seen  the  masses  of  reports 
coming  in,  even  to  the  minor  offices  of  the  League,  can 
understand  what  the  handling  of  the  iliree  million  A.  P.  L. 
investigations  really  meant  in  office  work  alone. 

The  Army  is  divide-d  into  the  Staff  and  the  Line ;  other- 
wise, the  Office  and  the  Field.  A  similar  division  may  be 
made  in  the  American  Protective  League.  The  men  han- 
dling the  records  in  the  central  office  are  more  or  less 
unhonored  and  unsung.  Upon  the  other  hand,  the  opera- 
tive who  puts  on  false  eyebrows  and  a  beard  and  goes  out 
to  stalk  a  suspect  is  apt  to  seem  far  more  the  heroic  figure, 
although  what  he  really  is  doing  is  no  more  than  getting 
something  for  the  office  to  file.  Neither  branch  of  the 
activity  ought  to  be  overlooked. 

The  New  York  A.  P.  L.  conducted  investigations  for  the 
Department  of  Justice  under  three  heads ;  the  State  Depart- 
ment under  two  heads;  the  War  Department  under  five 
heads ;  and  also  the  Navy  Department,  the  Alien  Property 
Custodian,  the  Civil  Service  Commission,  the  War  Trade 
Board  and  the  U.  S.  Shipping  Board,  as  well  as  the  Treas- 
ury Department  under  three  different  heads. 

When  one  pauses  to  reflect  on  these  different  classifica- 


THE  STORY  OF  NEW  YORK  209 

tions  of  the  work  and  the  different  ramifications  of  the 
League's  operative  forces,  one  is  pretty  nearly  ready  to 
admit  that  without  a  perfect  office  system  the  whole  thing 
would  have  been  jolly  well  messed  up  inside  of  a  week. 
This  amateur  organization  sprang  into  being  almost  over 
night,  a  smooth-working,  modern  business  machine,  which 
rendered  invaluable  services  at  no  cost  at  all.  When  you 
stop  to  think  of  it,  this  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  phe- 
nomena of  American  business  life. 

The  total  membership  of  officers  and  operatives  in  the 
New  York  Division  numbered  over  four  thousand  five  hun- 
dred substantial  business  and  professional  men,  chosen 
from  every  field  of  activity.  They  were  classified  and  re- 
classified to  such  an  extent  that,  from  speaking  any 
required  language  on  earth  to  expert  knowledge  in  any 
profession  on  earth,  aid  could  be  furnished  on  demand. 
Two  significant  facts  stand  out  in  comparing  New  York 
with  other  cities.  The  first,  the  rather  smaller  number  of 
men;  the  second,  the  rather  small  amount  of  money  spent 
in  the  work.  It  is  due  to  the  excellent  business  system  of 
that  di\asion  that  the  cost  per  case  was  kept  so  low,  for 
New  York  runs  more  cases  to  the  operative,  and  more  to 
the  member,  than  any  other  city  in  the  country. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  STORY  OF  PHILADELPHIA 

Splendid  Record  of  a  Ship-Shape  Office — A  Model  Organi- 
zation and  the  Way  it  Worked  —  Stories  of  the  Silent  Sol- 
diers—  A  Banner  Report. 

The  City  of  Brotherly  Love  gives  us  pause.  Is  it  indeed 
the  truth  that  Americans  do  not  know  their  own  country? 
The  story  of  the  American  Protective  League,  covering 
some  millions  of  typewritten  ^vords,  some  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  pages  of  typewritten  copy,  might  be  called 
one  of  the  largest  and  one  of  the  best  histories  of  America 
ever  written.  It  offers  no  pretense  at  deductions,  but  only 
an  abundance  of  facts,  objective  and  not  subjective,  con- 
crete and  not  abstract.  Popular  impression  hath  it  that 
the  city  founded  by  good  William  Penn  is  a  simple  and 
quiet  sort  of  community,  where  life  goes  on  lawfully  and 
all  is  ease  and  comfort,  peace  and  content.  The  facts  do 
not  seem  to  bear  out  this  supposition.  Philadelphia  was 
as  lawless  as  the  next  city  during  war  times,  possessed  of 
as  many  undesirables  and  offering  as  many  urgent  prob- 
lems in  national  defense.  Tucson,  Arizona,  reports  peace. 
Philadelphia  is  bad  and  boixierish ! 

Among  the  many  hundreds  of  reports  coming  in  during 
the  closing  days  of  the  American  Protective  League,  there 
are  some  which  run  forty,  fifty,  or  seventy-five  pages  of 
single  space  type.  A  very  few  of  such  reports  would  make 
a  book  the  size  of  this  one  in  hand.  It  has  been,  let  it  be 
repeated,  with  a  most  genuine  regret  that  such  work  had 
to  be  condensed  by  the  press.  The  Philadelphia  report,  for 
instance,  covers  ninety  pages,  and  is  an  absolute  model  in 
every  way.  Indeed,  a  visit  to  the  Philadelphia  A.  P.  L. 
offices  would,  have  left  any  visitor  certain  of  the  high  level 
of  efficiency  which  has  been  attained  by  that  division  in 
every  phase  of  its  w^ork.     There  was  not  a  neater,  better- 

210 


THE  STORY  OF  PHILADELPHIA  211 

systematized  or  smoother-running  division  in  all  the  League 
than  that  in  bad  and  borderish  Philadelphia.  The  installa- 
tion in  that  city  was  not  so  large  as  some.  A  Swiss  watch 
is  not  so  large  as  a  Big  Ben  clock,  but^the  latter  does  not 
keep  any  better  time  and  makes  much  more  noise  about  it. 
It  being  impossible  to  print  all  of  the  Philadelphia  re- 
port, it  is  quite  in  order  to  give  rather  a  full  summary  of 
it,  that  we  may  correct  the  old  impression  regarding  Phila- 
delphia as  a  place  of  peace.  The  tabulated  records  cover 
only  eleven  months,  from  December  26,  1917,  tb  November, 
1918.  In  that  period,  18,275  persons  were  examined,  not 
counting  those  who  were  released  in  the  big  slacker  raids. 
In  order  that  the  lay  reader  may  have  a  perfect  idea  of 
the  many  different  heads  of  activity  in  any  one  of  these 
great  offices,  the  Philadelphia  table  is  offered  in  full,  pre- 
cisely as  sent  in: 


Department  of  Justice  Cases. 
Alien  Enemy  Activities. 

a.  Male  : 1,575 

b.  Female    177    1,752 

Citizen  disloyalties  and  sedition. 

(Espionage  Act)    880 

Treason  1 

Sabotage,  bombs,  dynamite,  defective  manufacture  of 

war  material  78 

Anti-Military  activity,  interference  witb  draft,  etc . . .  91 

Propaganda. 

a.  Word  of  mouth  509 

b.  Printed  matter  and  publications 75       584 

Radical  organizations. 

I.  W.  W.,  Peoples'  Council,  League  of  Humanity,  and 
all  other  radical  organizations,  including  pacifist 

and  radical  "socialists"  377 

Bribery,  graft,  theft,  and  embezzlement 66 

Miscellaneous,  including  naturalization  and  jury 

panel    350 

Impersonation  of  U.  S.  or  foreign  oflBcers 21       371 


212  THE  WEB 

War  Department  Cases. 

Counter-Espionage  for  Military  Intelligence. 
Selective  Service  Regulations. 

a.  Under  local  and  district  boards 5,384 

(All  individual  investigations  of  delin- 
quents and  deserters  and  of  those  charged 
with  any  violation  of  selective  service  regu- 
lations.) 

b.  In  Slacker  raids 3,726 

c.  Of  local  and  district  board  members 47 

d.  Wofk  or  fight  order 18     9,175 

Character  and  Loyalty. 

a.  Civilian  applicants  for  oversea  service 1,013 

b.  Applicants  for  Commissions   61     1,074 

Training  camp  activities   6 

(Under  Sections  12  and  13  of  Selective  Service 
Law  Regulations,  p.  355.) 

a.  Liquor   587 

b.  Vice  and  prostitution  860    1,453 

Camp  desertions  and  absences  without  leave 175 

Collection  of  foreign  maps  and  photographs  for  Mili- 
tary Intelligence  Bureau — Pieces  of  matter  (about)     1,500 

Navy  Department. 

Counter-espionage    for    Naval    Intelligence,    in- 
cluding: 

Wireless     42 

Lights  9 

Other  signalling  to  submarines,  etc 7         58 

Food  Administration. 

Hoarding   33 

Destruction  1 

Waste   21 

Profiteering 6         61 

Fuel  Administration. 

Hoarding  25 

Destruction  0 

Waste   20 

Profiteering 5         50 


THE  STORY  OP  PHILADELPHIA  213 

Department  of  State. 

Vise  of  Passport  g 

Miscellaneous  1  Y 

Treasury  Department. 

War  Risk  Insurance  Allotments,  Allowances, 

Frauds,  etc 53 

Miscellaneous  2         55 

United  States  Shipping  Board. 

Under  National  Headquarters  Bulletins  Nos. 

11  and  12 26 

Federal  Investigation. 

Hog  Island  407 

Miscellaneous    33 

The  beginnings  of  the  A.  P.  L.  in  Philadelphia  lay  in 
a  meeting  of  fifty  business  men,  who  came  together  April 
9,  1917,  and  organized  as  the  Philadelphia  Branch  of  the 
A.  P.  L.  From  that  time  on,  varying  fortunes  and  different 
personnel  attended  the  League  activities.  On  December 
26,  1917,  Mr.  Mahlon  R.  Kline,  who  for  years  had  been  in 
charge  of  the  Claim  Department  of  the  Philadelphia  Rapid 
Transit  Company  and  had  been  engaged  in  secret  service 
work  in  other  corporations,  was  appointed  Chief  of  the  divi- 
sion. In  February,  1918,  there  came  in  with  Mr.  Kline, 
Mr.  Frank  H.  Gaskill,  formerly  Superintendent  of  the 
Franklin  Detective  Agency,  who  also  had  been  associated 
with  the  Claims  Department  of  the  Rapid  Transit  Com- 
pany. Although  no  pretense  is  made  of  naming  all  their 
associates,  it  should  be  mentioned  that  to  these  two  men 
must  be  accorded  a  great  deal  of  the  credit  for  the  last 
year's  work. 

Naturally  the  question  of  finances  came  in  early.  In 
January,  1918,  Mr.  Horace  A.  Beale,  Jr.,  president  of  an 
iron  company,  volunteered  to  purchase  any  furniture  and 
office  equipment  which  might  be  necessary.  This  brought 
out  the  need  of  a  permanent  fund,  and  Mr.  Beale  was  one 
of  the  League's  staunchest  supporters  along  these  lines. 
There  was  put  before  the  members  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  a  plant  protection  system  which  has  been  in 


214  THE  WEB 

practice  in  many  American  cities.  Factory  owners  paid 
into  the  treasury  of  the  League  twenty-five  to  one  hundred 
dollars  a  month,  which,  for  a  time,  covered  the  running 
expenses  of  the  office  even  in  its  growing  condition.  When 
this  income  became  inadequate,  Mr.  Kline  with  the  Execu- 
tive Committee  later  arranged  for  an  expense  account 
through  the  War  Chest  Fund  of  $3,000  a  month. 

There  was  a  handy  little  cabinet  made  up  by  the  Bureau 
Chief  in  charge  of  slackers  and  deserters,  which  contained 
the  following  card  index  information:  Names,  addresses 
and  telephone  numbers  of  members  to  be  counted  on  at 
any  hour ;  names  of  members  taking  assignments  in  the  sev- 
eral districts;  names  of  members  willing  to  accept  assign- 
ments in  any  section.  This  cabinet  contains  the  address  and 
telephone  numbers  of  all  members  owning  yachts,  motor 
cars,  etc. ;  also  a  record  of  members  speaking  the  following 
languages:  German,  French,  Italian,  Spanish,  Yiddish, 
Hungarian,  Swedish,  Russian,  Dutch,  Pennsylvania  Dutch, 
Danish,  Portuguese,  Chinese,  Polish,  Greek,  Esperanto,  Lap- 
landish,  Korean,  Japanese,  Austrian,  Slavish  and  Latin. 

The  League  in  Philadelphia  did  not  attempt  secrecy. 
On  the  contrary,  it  openly  availed  itself  of  the  services  of 
the  newspapers,  and  had  the  confident  backing  of  all  the 
great  journals.  It  did  not  ahvays  go  out  after  its  man 
personally,  but  saved  a  great  deal  of  time  by  inventing  a 
little  form  letter  which  read  as  f ollow^s : 

Mr.  John  Doe: 

Kindly  call  at  this  office  immediately  upon  receipt  of  this 
letter  with  reference  to  a  matter  of  great  importance.  Bring 
this  letter  with  you  and  ask  for  Mr.  Bouton. 

Respectfully, 

American  Protective  League. 

This  was  the  letter  sent  out  to  draft  evaders.  It  was 
thought  at  first  it  would  not  work,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  brought  in  a  stream  of  men  who  otherwise  would  have 
needed  to  be  found.     Once  in  the  office,  the  rest  was  easy. 

At  the  time  that  Mr.  Kline  came  into  the  League  there 
were  1,225  members.  Additional  members  were  selected 
with  great  care,  but  politics,  religion,  lodge  affiliations,  and 
so  forth,  were  not  factors  in  the  working  of  the  League. 


THE  STORY  OF  PHILADELPHIA  215 

There  were  on  February  7,  1919,  3,440  members  of  the 
A.  P.  L.  in  Philadelphia,  all  working  for  purely  patriotic 
motives. 

The  training  of  operatives  under  the  skilled  secret  serv- 
ice instruction  available  in  the  division  offices  resulted  in 
losing  a  good  many  men  to  the  Department  of  Justice 
forces,  who  were  not  slow  to  recognize  the  value  of  good, 
well-trained  men  when  they  saw  them.  There  were  many 
departments  of  the  United  States  Government  which  lie 
under  deep  debt  to-day  to  the  Philadelphia  office  of  the 
American  Protective  League. 

The  Philadelphia  work  was  perhaps  most  famous  through 
its  great  system  of  drives.  That  city  is  indeed  the  original 
drive  center,  and  there,  better  than  any^vhere  else,  per- 
haps, may  be  seen  the  working  of  a  thoroughly  differen- 
tiated system  of  drag-nets.  There  were  a  number  of  these 
raids  which  may  be  summarized  briefly. 

The  first  was  a  small  affair  conducted  on  May  17,  1918, 
which  took  in  a  couple  of  roadhouses  where  uniformed 
men  were  buying  liquor. 

The  second  raid  was  conducted  on  July  15,  1918,  when 
about  2,000  members  swooped  down  on  the  Tenderloin 
district  of  Chester,  Pennsylvania,  arresting  about  four  hun- 
dred persons,  mostly  of  the  lowest  type.  About  ninety 
per  cent  of  those  prisoners  were  convicted  for  bootlegging 
or  crimes  of  a  worse  character  —  denisons  of  the  section 
known  as  Bethel  Court  and  Leiper's  Flat,  which  the  officers 
call  the  worst  hell-holes  they  have  ever  seen  —  *'such 
places  as  make  the  Mexican  border  look  like  a  Sunday 
School  picnic,"  says  one.  In  this  tough  district  many  des- 
perate characters  were  met  who  were  quick  to  use 
weapons:  but  the  agents  of  the  law  sustained  practically 
no  personal  injuries. 

Other  raids  followed,  the  sixth  taking  place  on  August 
2,  1918,  at  Woodside  Park,  an  amusement  place  which 
was  filled  with  slackers.  Two  hundred  A.  P.  L.  members 
and  agents  of  D.  J.  surrounded  the  place  and  handled  in 
all  2,000  men,  out  of  which  more  than  three  hundred  were 
detained. 

The  seventh  raid  was  August  6,  1918  —  the  great  slacker 
raid  on  Shibe  Park,  at  the  time  when  there  was  a  crowd 


216  THE  WEB 

of  8,000  men  gathered  to  witness  the  Jack  Thompson-Sam 
Langford  prize  fight.  There  were  twenty  agents  of  D.  J., 
two  hundred  A.  P.  L.  members  and  one  hundredj  Phila- 
delphia police.  They  examined  over  2,000  men  between 
the  ages  of  twenty-one  and  thirty-two,  and  held  one  hun- 
dred and  forty-one  as  deserters  or  evaders. 

The  eighth  raid,  August  15,  1918,  was  set  at  Atlantic 
City,  N.  J.,  and  is  considered  the  daddy  of  them  all.  At 
that  time  four  pleasure  piers  were  raided,  and  more  than 
60,000  men,  women  and  children  were  handled  without 
commotion.  Preparations  for  this  raid  were  left  to  Mr. 
Gaskill,  since  he  had  done  so  well  with  other  raids.  In 
the  call  for  the  assembly  the  members  did  not  know  where 
they  were  going  —  they  got  sealed  directions.  At  10:00 
P.  M.  sharp,  the  entrance  andj  exit  guards  took  up  posi- 
tions and  refused  to  allow  any  males  to  leave  the  pier 
without  showing  classification  cards,  if  within  draft  age. 
The  other  squads  of  from  fifty  to  seventy-five  men  tvere 
instructed  to  proceed  to  the  ocean  end  of  the  pier,  form 
a  solid  line  and  sweep  all  men  within  the  above  mentioned 
ages,  found  without  papers,  to  a  point  at  the  board  walk 
end  of  the  pier  where  they  were  detained  until  the  work 
had  been  completed,  after  which  they  were  transferred  to 
the  Armory  for  further  examination.  There  were  about 
seven  hundred  men  apprehended  in  that  raid  and  sixty 
real  slackers.  It  was  an  all-night  job,  the  members  from 
Philadelphia  arriving  home  about  seven  o'clock  as  quietly 
as  they  had  slipped  out  of  town. 

On  November  6,  1918,  the  Olympia  Athletic  Club  was 
raidedj,  and  out  of  the  8,000  men  who  had  gathered  to 
witnessed  the  Dempsey-Levinsky  prize  fight,  more  than 
1,000  were  detained,  thirty-six  of  which  proved  real  draft 
evaders.  This  bunch  of  fight  fans  was  handled  by  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  A.  P.  L.  members,  forty  police, 
and  twelve  agents  of  the  Department  of  Justice. 

The  signing  of  the  armistice  on  the  eleventh  of  Novem- 
ber ended  the  slacker  raids,  but  having  its  hand  well 
skilled  by  this  time,  the  A.  P.  L.  went  on  with  vice  raids 
and  picked  up  a  great  many  people  who  had  not  complied 
with  the  draft  laws.  On  November  20,  1918,  Chester,  Pa., 
was  again  raided  and  an  additional  forty-two  prisoners 


THE  STORY  OF  PHILADELPHIA  217 

apprehended.  The  next  three  days  were  put  in  with  Ten- 
derloin raids  for  bootleggers,  of  whom  sixty  were  sentenced 
to  nine  months'  imprisonment. 

It  is  probable  that  the  Philadelphia  division  has  worked 
out  the  raid  matter  as  exactly  as  any  other  division  of  the 
country.  The  Chief  had  a  carefully-drawn  diagram  or  map 
made,  showing  the  sj^stem  by  which  the  men  were  stationed. 
It  is  a  good  instance  of  the  Web  of  the  Law.  The  chart  shows 
fifteen  squads  of  men  traveling  north  and  south,  east  and 
west,  in  a  systematic  covering  of  a  bootleg  territory  10  by  15 
squares.  Therefore,  one  squad  travels  north  on  one  street 
and  south  on  another  street,  while  the  squad  working  on 
opposite  sides  to  them  travels  east  and  then  west  in  the 
same  manner.  This  makes  it  absolutely  impossible  for  an 
offender  to  operate  without  an  agent  seeing  him.  It  was 
often  noticed  that  a  bootlegger  approaching  a  uniformed 
man  would  be  almost  instantly  surrounded  by  one  or  two 
or  even  three  squads  who  closed  in  to  make  the  arrest. 
Philadelphia  had  the  hunting  of  the  bootlegger  down  to  a 
fine  point. 

Mr.  Todd  Daniel,  Superintendent  of  the  Department  of 
Justice  for  Philadelphia,  has  always  been  an  ardent  ad- 
mirer of  the  A.  P.  L.  In  return,  the  League  has  supplied 
him  on  request  with  fifty  to  one  hundred  motor  cars  each 
month,  and  investigated  as  many  as  1,000  cases  which  his 
staff  would  have  been  unable  to  handle.  No  wonder  he 
admires  them. 

Surveillance  such  as  this  kept  property  damages  in  and 
around  this  great  industrial  center  at  a  minimum.  The 
Eddystone  Munition  Plant  explosion  occurred  previous  to 
the  organization  of  the  League.  The  Woodbury  Bag  Load- 
ing Plant,  Woodbury,  N.  J.,  was  so  well  covered  that 
although  a  great  many  attempts  to  cause  explosions  and 
set  fires  were  made  with  bombs  andj  inflammable  materials, 
they  all  failed  of  their  purpose.  No  one  can  tell  how  much 
property  loss  was  averted  through  the  work  of  the  Phila- 
delphia division.  It  would  be  invidious  to  quote  any,  and 
hopeless  to  quote  all,  of  the  many  letters  of  approval  re- 
ceived from  persons  high  in  Government,  political  and 
commercial  circles,  complimenting  the  division  upon  its 
efficiency. 


218  THE  WEB 

Needless  to  say,  Philadelphia  had  her  own  share  of 
causes  celebres.  One  of  the  most  unique  and  interesting 
of  these  was  that  of  the  Philadelphia  Tageblatt,  a  German 
daily  newspaper  prosecuted  under  the  charge  of  seditious 
and  disloyal  utterances.  In  the  fall  of  1917,  a  raid  was 
conducted  by  D.  J.  and  A.  P.  L.  upon  the  headquarters 
of  this  paper,  at  which  time  many  files,  books,  papers,  and 
so  forth,  were  seized,  with  the  result  that  warrants  were 
issued  for  the  editor  and  all  his  staff.  When  they  were 
called  for  trial,  members  of  the  division  were  again  used 
for  the  purpose  of  investigating  the  jury  panel,  as  well  as 
for  the  procurement  of  evidence  essential  to  the  case.  In 
one  item,  this  work  took  the  form  of  securing  through 
banking  members,  proofs  of  certain  signatures  without 
which  the  Government's  case  would  have  been  crippled. 

These  men  were  tried  for  treason,  but  were  discharged 
for  lack  of  evidence.  They  were  subsequently  prosecuted 
under  a  charge  of  conspiracy  to  hinder  voluntary  enroll- 
ment and  for  violation  of  the  Espionage  Act.  On  the  latter 
charge,  they  were  found  guilty.  Louis  Werner,  the  editor, 
and  his  associate,  Martin  Darkow,  got  five  years'  imprison- 
ment each,  Herman  Lemke  tw^o  years,  Peter  Shaefer  and 
Paul  Vogel,  one  year  each. 

The  Tagehlatt  had  been  warned  often  against  its 
unseemly  utterances,  but  to  no  avail.  It  was  a  sheet  of 
no  great  consequence,  and  about  fifteen  years  ago  was 
anarchistic.  Then  it  turned  to  Socialism.  When  war  was 
declared,  it  was  outspoken  against  the  Allies.  After  the 
declaration  it  became  more  cautious,  but  its  columns  were 
full  of  propaganda.  It  had  no  telegraph  or  cable  service, 
but  its  policy  was  dictated  by  the  selective  choice  of  its 
editorial  staff.  Louis  Werner  was  a  naturalized  citizen 
born  in  Germany.  Darkow  was  a  non-registered  alien 
enemy  and  wrote  the  editorials.  The  president  was  Peter 
Shaefer,  the  treasurer  Paul  Vogel,  and  the  business  man- 
ager Herman  Lemke.  The  trial  for  treason  lasted  only 
ten  days.  The  second  trial,  for  conspiracy,  was  more  suc- 
cessful from  the  viewpoint  of  the  law.  Upon  the  stand, 
both  Werner  and  Darkow  were  insolent.  They  will  have 
tin^e  to  think  over  all  these  matters  in  quiet  for  a  while. 

Red  Cross  frauds  attracted  some  attention  on  the  part 


THE  STORY  OF  PHILADELPHIA  219 

of  the  League  in  Philadelphia,  which  investigated  all  sorts 
of  fanciful  rumors,  as  well  as  several  schemes  of  fraudu- 
lent or  nearly  fraudulent  or  unworthy  nature.  One  of 
these,  purporting  to  collect  for  a  central  hospital,  seemed 
at  first  to  have  merit;  but  when  advertisements  appeared 
offering  solicitors  a  highly  lucrative  connection,  the  A.  P.  L. 
agents  discovered  that  this  was  for  the  purpose  of  raising 
about  $1,500,000  —  out  of  which  a  commission  of  twenty 
per  cent  was  to  be  paid  to  the  solicitors.  A  halt  was  called 
on  this,  but  the  same  people  got  busy  again  about  three 
months  later  wdth  a  campaign  purporting  to  collect 
$1,000,000  for  the  care  of  *' crippled  negro  soldiers." 
There  Avas  a  fund  of  about  $10,000  which  had  been  con- 
tributed by  colored  persons.  Some  of  the  people  connectedi 
with  this  movement  were  well-meaning  and  absolutely  dis- 
interested; yet  in  the  background  were  others  who  ap- 
peared to  be  out  for  the  coin.  The  campaign  was  closed 
down  again.  This  is  but  a  sample  of  other  affairs  of  the 
same  sort. 

One  of  the  notable  Philadelphia  affairs  was  that  of  Nor- 
man T.  W ,  scholar,  patent  attorney,  chess  expert 

and  draft  evader.  This  case  originated  in  Washington 
where  he  failed  to  appear  for  examination  or  to  turn  in 
a  questionnaire.  He  asked  to  have  his  examination  trans- 
ferred to  Philadelphia,  so  the  whole  matter  w^as  transferred 

to  Philadelphia.     On  July  15,  W was  mailed  his 

order  for  induction  into  the  service  and  was  told  to  report 
July  24,  but  he  did  not  appear.  Philadelphia  A.  P.  L. 
then  took  on  the  matter. 

W was  the  son  of  respectable  Philadelphia  parents 

and  of  good  connections.  Without  doubt,  he  and  his 
brother  were  shielded  by  their  relatives  and  friends  as 
long  as  possible.    On  November  8,  the  Philadelphia  Division 

of  the  A.  P.  L.  wired  Washington  stating  that  W had 

been  apprehended.  On  November  16,  1918,  he  was  sent  to 
Camp  Dix. 

The  public  has  some  notion  of  the  great  plant  for  ship 
construction  erected  at  Hog  Island,  near  Philadelphia,  by 
the  United  States  Shipping  Board.  All  sorts  of  stories 
came  out  regarding  affairs  at  this  shipping  yard,  and  the 
charges  were  so  direct  and  well-supported  that  Congress 


220  THE  WEB 

finally  investigated  the  matter.  The  Philadelphia  Division 
of  the  A,  P.  L.  had  some  part  in  this  investigation,  which 
had  to  do  with  charges  of  extravagance,  graft  and  waste 
of  public  moneys.  There  was  one  item,  the  employment 
of  thousands  of  jitney  drivers,  which  was  severely  criti- 
cised. These  cars  were  employed  by  the  Emergency  Fleet 
Corporation  to  transport  their  workmen  from  their  homes 
to  the  Island,  since  it  was  thought  the  regular  transporta- 
tion lines  could  not  handle  them.  The  charge  was  made 
that  large  amounts  were  collected  by  the  jitney  men  from 
the  Shipping  Yard  without  rendering  any  service ;  the 
shipping  yards,  in  turn,  charged  these  amounts  back  to 
the  Government.  There  were  thousands  of  reports  turned 
in  by  the  operatives  to  D.  J.  on  these  ^'jitney  cases."  It 
was  found  that  a  good  many  men  in  authority  were  in 
the  habit  of  ordering  the  drivers,  after  they  had  brought 
them  down  to  the  Shipping  Yard,  to  go  back  home  and 
place  themselves  at  the  disposal  of  the  members  of  the 
families  of  the  foremen  or  officers  —  the  Government  thus 
supporting  a  large  number  of  private  automobiles  for  sal- 
aried persons.  The  entire  matter  quieted  down  when  the 
increased  cost  of  tires  and  gas  deprived  the  jitney  drivers 
of  their  profits,  and  when  competition  came  on  through 
the  installation  of  better  service  and  equipment  by  the 
Philadelphia  Rapid  Transit  Company. 

There  was  no  branch  of  the  A.  P.  L.  activities  in  Phila- 
delphia so  carefully  handled  as  that  having  to  do  with 
the  I.  W.  W.  and  other  radical  organizations.  There  were 
five  Locals  found  and  fifty-one  revolutionary  clubs  with 
a  total  membership  of  5,000,  ninety  per  cent  of  whom  were 
of  foreign  birth,  absolutely  opposed  to  all  government  and 
ever  ready  to  overthrow  law  by  revolutionary  tactics. 

The  A.  P.  L.  made  a  raid  upon  one  club  solely  for  the 
purpose  of  seizing  literature  and  files.  As  a  result  of  this, 
fifty  I.  W.  W.  agitators  were  dismissed  from  shipping 
yards  and  government  plants.  Some  of  these  were  in  the 
Government  Bag  Loading  Plant  at  Woodbury,  in  the  ship- 
ping yard  at  Bristol,  and  in  the  Emergency  Fleet  Corpora- 
tion at  Hog  Island.  All  these  Philadelphia  radicals  con- 
tributed heavily  to  the  defense  fund  of  the  I.  W.  W.  mem- 
bers who  were  on  trial  in  Chicago. 


\ 


THE  STORY  OF  PHILADELPHIA  221 

It  was  thought  desirable  to  find  any  possible  connection 
of  German  interest  with  these  radicals.  At  one  meeting 
the  discovery  was  made  that  two  men  appeared  and  made 
a  contribution  to  the  foregoing  defense  fund.  They  came 
from  a  Fairmoimt  German  singing  society  —  where  they 
sang  anything  but  American  patriotic  airs.  The  League 
kept  close  watch  on  all  these  radical  organizations,  so  close 
that  they  have  not  dared  to  make  any  outright  break. 
The  slightest  step  out  of  the  proper  path  would  mean  an 
immediate  reckoning  with  men  who  have  been  rather  stern 
in  matters  of  justice. 

After  the  Tagehlatf  case,  which  was  the  first  case  in  the 
entire  country  resulting  in  a  conviction  under  the  indict- 
ments which  were  brought  against  Werner  and  his  asso- 
ciates, the  Grover  Bergdoll  case  of  mysterious  disappear- 
ance is  perhaps  Philadelphia's  greatest  contribution  to 
detective  literature.  Indeed,  there  is  still  chance  for  a 
good  detective  in  Philadelphia  who  can  give  bond  for  the 
production  of  the  body  of  Grover  C.  Bergdoll,  college 
athlete,  wealthy  young  man-about-town,  skillful  mechani- 
cian, student  of  law,  X-ray  experimenter,  radical  editor  — 
and  draft  evader.  The  Bergdoll  brothers,  Grover  and 
Irwin,  are  known  as  the  "slackers  de  luxe."  They  were 
sons  of  a  wealthy  brewer,  and  having  money,  it  seemed 
to  them  that  they  need  not  respect  the  law.  They  had 
shown  their  contempt  for  it  before  the  draft  reached  out 
for  them.  Grover  C.  did  not  register,  and  Irwin  failed  to 
file  his  questionnaire.  A.  P.  L.  was  set  on  their  trail,  but 
the  young  men  had  both  disappeared.  From  that  time 
until  now  neither  of  these  men  has  been  apprehended. 
Grover  C.  Bergdoll  was  seen  in  Mexico,  was  alleged  to 
have  been  in  the  "West  on  a  ranch,  was  reported  to  have 
been  in  Spain,  was  said  to  have  been  seen  in  Western  New 
York,  and  was  reported  also  to  have  been  in  Philadelphia 
twice.  Sometimes  he  would  send  a  card  to  the  newspapers 
just  to  tantalize  the  public,  or  to  the  officials  whom  he 
knew  to  be  after  him.  Well,  money  is  a  present  friend 
in  times  of  trouble.  For  a  time  the  Bergdoll  mystery  will 
remain  a  mystery.  One  of  these  days  the  life  of  the  Berg- 
doll boys  will  fail  to  interest  them.  One  of  these  days  the 
law  will  lay  its  hands  on  them,  and  they  will  have  to  settle 


222  THE  WEB 

with  the  country  which  they  have  slighted  and  scorned 
and  whose  citizenship  they  do  not  deserve. 

It  may  have  occurred  to  readers  of  these  pages  that 
there  was  not  enough  blood  and  thunder  stuff  pulled  off 
by  the  operatives  of  the  A.  P.  L.  It  is  quite  possible  that 
the  Department  of  Justice  men  have  had  the  harder  load 
to  carry  in  these  more  violent  affairs,  because  quite  often 
they  are  obliged  to  make  the  actual  arrest,  on  warrants 
under  evidence  obtained  by  the  A.  P.  L.  One  Philadelphia 
incident  resulted  in  the  killing  of  the  man  sought  —  a 
negro  desperado  who  carried  several  aliases  but  was  best 
known  in  the  saloon  district  as  ** Porto  Rico." 

On  Friday,  November  8,  two  men  of  the  League,  in 
trying  to  locate  a  suspect,  found  two  colored  men  in  mili- 
tary uniform  whom  they  followed.  These  gave  up  the 
whereabouts  of  two  of  their  companions  who  were  in  a 
certain  house.  When  found,  these  men  claimed  they  had 
been  drugged  and  robbed  by  some  colored  women  there. 
It  had  been  their  present  plan  to  wait  there  in  the  dark- 
ness until  the  women  came  back  and  then  to  kill  them. 
The  whole  scene  was  in  a  tough  part  of  town  where  the 
uniform  of  the  United  States  does  not  belong. 

Out  of  these  proceedings  the  operatives  got  the  address 
of  four  other  men,  one  of  these  Porto  Rico,  who  were  sup- 
posed to  be  in  the  habit  of  robbing  colored  soldiers  and 
other  men  in  uniform.  A  certain  saloon  was  visited  by 
the  operatives,  and  a  few  minutes  after  they  appeared,  a 
burly  negro  entered  and  was  accosted  as  ''Porto  Rico"  by 
the  owner.  The  two  operatives  were  C.  H.  Keelor  of  the 
League  and  Mr.  Sprague  of  the  Department  of  Justice. 
Keelor  tapped  Porto  Rico  on  the  arm  and  asked  him  for 
his  card.  The  man  got  into  action  at  once,  kicked  Keelor 
in  the  leg  and  struck  Sprague,  knocking  him  down.  He 
made  a  leap  to  the  open  and  pulled  a  heavy  revolver, 
starting  to  retreat  northeast  on  Lombard  Street. 

Operative  Logan  was  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street, 
and  he  now  closed  in.  There  was  a  shot  fired,  perhaps  by 
a  friend  of  Porto  Rico.  The  latter  raised  his  revolver  and 
took  aim  at  Sprague.  Sprague  was  armed  with  a  heavy- 
holster  gun  and  beat  the  negro  to  the  shot,  killing  him 
with  a  bullet  through  the  heart.     Porto  Rico  fell,  his  re- 


THE  STORY  OF  PHILADELPHIA  223 

volver  dropping  from  his  hand,  and  such  was  his  vitality 
that  for  a  long  time  he  struggled  to  reach  the  gun  as  it 
lay  close  by  him.  Sprague  was  cleared  in  court,  as  he  shot 
obviously  in  self-defense.  Charles  Seamore,  alias  John  E. 
Manuel,  alias  Porto  Rico,  was  a  notorious  gun  man.  Be- 
side his  revolver  he  carried  a  razor  and  a  number  of  38- 
calibre  cartridges.  His  registration  card  showed  that  he 
had  registered  under  a  false  name.  In  almost  the  same 
place  a  little  while  later  a  Philadelphia  policeman  was  shot 
by  a  negro,  who  in  turn  was  killed  by  a  lieutenant  of  the 
police  department. 

In  May,  1918,  Major  C.  N.  Green,  U.  S.  Engineers,  came 
into  the  League  Headquarters  of  the  Philadelphia  Division 
and  said  he  wanted  assistance  in  organizing  secret  service 
work  for  plant  protection  and  that  he  had  been  directed 
to  the  A.  P.  L.  offices.  Out  of  this  later  grew  the  connec- 
tion of  the  A.  P.  L.  with  the  Woodbury  Bag  Loading 
Plant. 

At  first  there  were  about  one  hundred  buildings  on  the 
1,800  acres  of  unfenced  land,  about  two  hundred  men 
being  engaged  in  guarding  the  place.  An  organization 
of  proved  men  had  been  made,  which  went  directly  into 
Government  service.  Five  strikes  were  settled  and  no 
serious  labor  trouble  resulted.  It  seemed  marvelous  that 
no  disaster  occurred  in  this  plant.  Time  and  again  enemies 
attached  time  bombs  to  powder  cars  on  their  way  to  the 
munition  plant.  These  cars  were  all  stopped  on  an  outside 
siding  and  searched,  sometimes  as  many  as  thirty  in  one 
night.  One  time  a  bomb  was  found  and  two  sticks  of 
dynamite.  A  great  deal  of  oily  waste  was  found,  which 
was  no  doubt  attached  in  the  hope  that  it  might  be  set 
afire  and  so  cause  destruction  of  the  car.  There  were  two 
hundred  and  ten  arrests  made  under  charge  of  disorderly 
conduct,  and  one  hundred  under  charge  of  trespassing. 
In  each  of  these  cases  a  conviction  was  secured.  About 
two  hundred  violators  of  the  Selective  Service  Act  were 
put  under  arrest,  and,  as  has  been  stated,  thirty-five  mem- 
bers of  the  I.  W.  W.  were  removed  from  the  premises. 
More  than  one  hundred  and  ten  Austrians  and  Hungarians 
were  discharged,  and  about  two  hundred  aliens  sent  to  the 
Department  of  Justice  for  examination.    Over  1,500  inves- 


224  THE  WEB 

tigations  of  suspects  were  made  by  the  League,  largely  of 
men  whose  names  seemed  to  proclaim  them  of  German 
extraction.  The  record  of  this  plant  is  unique,  it  probably 
being  the  only  plant  that  has  had  so  low  a  record  of  fires, 
explosions  and  accidents  in  all  the  history  of  our  war  work. 

Guards  often  found  people  endeavoring  to  do  damage. 
One  such  man  had  piled  up  scrap  lumber  and  rags  and 
was  touching  it  off  when  fired  upon  by  the  guard.  Two 
other  attempts  were  made  to  destroy  another  one  of  the 
buildings.  Not  content  with  protecting  the  property  from 
without,  the  A.  P.  L.  even  protected  it  from  within. 
Charges  were  made  of  extravagant  prices  paid  by  the 
Government,  a  fact  which  strongly  indicated  graft  some- 
where. A  corporation  had  made  a  bid  to  furnish  boxes  at 
$450  each,  delivered.  This  bid  was  refused.  Volunteer 
workers  were  called  on  to  make  these  boxes.  The  work 
was  done  on  Sunday,  double  time  being  paid  —  each  man 
receiving  $14  a  day  —  and  even  with  such  labor  charges, 
it  was  found  the  boxes  could  be  turned  out  at  $17.25! 
This  particular  expenditure  of  money  was  stopped  by  the 
artless  Ordnance  Department.  One  or  two  chiefs  were  dis- 
missed on  the  strength  of  reports  from  the  A.  P.  L.  of 
inefiiciency,  graft  and  irregularities. 

This,  then,  all  too  briefly  and  lamely  done  in  review,  is 
the  story  of  Philadelphia,  which  operated  one  of  the  very 
best  amateur  detective  agencies  the  world  has  ever  seen 
and  which  was  a  credit  not  only  to  Philadelphia  itself  but 
to  every  operative  of  the  A.  P.  L.  wherever  he  was  located 
in  the  United  States. 

It  only  remains  to  say  that  in  the  monthly  report  for 
December,  1918,  the  Philadelphia  Division  turns  in  forty- 
eight  bootleggers  additional,  two  hold-up  men,  and  nine 
soldiers  absent  without  leave.  It  furnished  D.  J.  in  that 
month  six  hundred  and  forty-five  men  and  sixty-five  cars, 
investigated,  in  that  month  two  hundred  and  fifty-two  draft 
evaders,  seven  hundred  and  forty-three  cases  from  D.  J. 
and  various  branches  of  the  A.  P.  L.,  and  1,812  office  assign- 
ments and  Washington  investigations.  The  Division  closed 
the  month  of  December,  after  the  Armistice,  going  strong, 
with  a  membership  of  3,438. 

On  the  last  day  of  the  year,  and  after  Philadelphia  had 


THE  STORY  OF  PHILADELPHIA  225 

iinislied  all  its  reports  for  the  year,  there  was  a  bomb 
outrage  in  that  city  in  which  lawless  persons  blew  up  the 
homes  of  three  citizens.  A  call  to  the  City  Hall  brought 
out  every  available  detective  and  policeman,  and  houses  of 
other  prominent  men  were  placed  under  guard  for  that 
night.  Once  more  the  drag-net  was  put  out  to  take  in 
the  lawless  and  all  those  of  Bolshevik  tendencies.  The 
outrage  was  of  such  a  nature  that  the  Philadelphia  papers 
carried  editorials  almost  appealing  to  the  American  Pro- 
tective League  not  to  disband.  Truly  it  will  be  missed  in 
that  city  and  in  many  another  city  of  America.  In  this 
bomb  outrage  the  lives  of  women  and  children  were  endan- 
gered. "What  are  we  to  think  of  America  for  the  future 
if  at  will  the  superintendent  of  police,  a  judge  of  the  court, 
and  a  president  of  a  chamber  of  commerce  are  to  have 
their  houses  blown  up  as  an  act  of  vengeance  of  wholly 
irresponsible  people  such  as  no  doubt  committed  this  crime ! 
Early  in  January,  1919,  Mr.  Frank  H.  Gaskill,  Assistant 
Chief,  was  promoted  to  be  Chief  of  the  Philadelphia  Divi- 
sion for  its  closing  days,  ]\Ir.  Mahlon  R.  Kline  resigning  in 
his  favor.  The  demobilization  banquet  of  Philadelphia 
Division  A.  P.  L.  was  held  on  the  night  of  February  5, 
1919,  and  it  was  as  fine  and  ship-shape  as  all  the  other 
activities  of  the  Division.  It  was  hard  for  these  men  to 
say  good-bye.  Indeed,  it  is  quite  probable  that  many  of 
the  old  Philadelphia  A.  P.  L.  members  will  organize,  under 
another  name,  for  purposes  somewhat  similar. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  STORY  OF  NEWARK 

Big  Division  of  Northern  New  Jersey — Hot-Bed  of  Spydom 
and  Anarchy  —  Cases  from  the  Files  —  Guarding  the  Gate 
to  the  Sea. 

Northern  New  Jersey  was  recognized  as  one  of  the  riski- 
est regions  of  the  United  States.  Time  out  of  mind,- Ameri- 
can readers  have  noted,  with  the  short-lived  American 
anger,  the  many  newspaper  tales  of  Paterson  and  anarchy, 
of  New  Jersey  and  New  Thought,  of  socialistic  ranters 
hailing  from  this  or  that  semi-foreign  community,  in  one 
of  the  oldest  states  in  the  American  union,  whose  battle- 
fields in  our  first  war  for  freedom  are  spread  on  many 
glorious  pages  of  our  country's  history.  The  battlefields 
of  Jersey  are  different  now,  and  are  not  so  glorious.  Still, 
a  few  men,  as  patriotic  as  those  in  Revolutionary  days, 
have  done  their  best  during  this  war  to  keep  their  country 
safe.  The  work  of  the  Northern  New  Jersey  Division, 
which  has  been  in  charge  of  Mr.  W.  D.  McDermid,  as  State 
Inspector,  is  reassuring. 

It  is  proper  to  point  out  that  the  Northern  New  Jersey 
Division,  being  one  of  the  first  of  the  A.  P.  L.  to  be  organ- 
ized, operated  on  lines  different  from  those  of  almost  any 
other  territory.  Its  district  covers  one-half  of  the  state, 
including  the  vitally  important  Port  of  Embarkation. 
Under  a  single  central  office,  it  combined  over  one  hundred 
municipalities,  most  of  which  would  ordinarily  have  had  a 
separate  headquarters  organization,  but  which  for  local  rea- 
sons had  all  been  consolidated  in  one  division. 

There  was  abundance  to  do,  and  there  were  plenty  to 
be  watched.  There  could,  for  example,  be  furnished  sev- 
eral hundred  instances  of  sabotage  in  this  manufacturing 
district  of  Northern  New  Jersey  —  sabotage  either  detected 
in  advance,  or  thoroughly  investigated,  afterwards.  This 
I  226 


THE  STORY  OF  NEWARK  227 

was  SO  common  in  the  hundreds  of  plants  in  that  District 
that  it  became  for  the  Northern  Division,  for  the  most 
part,  a  matter  of  routine.  A  great  deal  of  the  work  of 
this  character  ultimately  was  handled  by  the  Plant  Pro- 
tection Division  of  the  War  Department. 

In  upper  New  Jersey,  as  in  the  State  of  New  York,  the 
Governmental  departments  reached  out  and  rather  over- 
shadowed, in  glory  at  least,  the  patient  and  less  known 
efforts  of  the  A.  P.  L.  Newark  frankly  complains  that 
quite  often  sufficiently  vigorous  action  was  not  to  be  had 
by  the  officers  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  even  after 
full  evidence  had  been  handed  to  it  by  the  A.  P.  L.  Some 
A.  P.  L.  men  even  go  so  far  as  to  claim  that  D.  J.  would 
no^t  only  crab  an  act,  but  claim  a  glory !  Our  State  Inspec- 
tor voices  this  in  occasional  comment: 

In  particular  reference  to  two  cases  of  ours,  it  is  a  source 
of  great  disappointment  and  a  great  deal  of  harsh  criticism 
that  the  Department  of  Justice  has  seen  fit  to  take  the  position 
toward  our  evidence  that  it  has.  Their  indifference  has  led  us 
to  secure  a  number  of  clean-cut  convictions  in  state  courts 
under  local  laws.  These,  of  course,  have  not  the  scope  of 
Federal  laws,  under  which  these  cases  might  very  much  better 
have  been  prosecuted  We  feel  that  in  common  justice  to  the 
work  of  the  A.  P.  L.,  some  such  comment  as  this  should  be 
made. 

There  was  abundant  fire  behind  some  of  these  New  Jer- 
sey smokes,  be  sure  of  that,  and  many  rumors  of  the  class 
commonly  pooh-poohed  at  by  M.  I.  D.  and  D.  J.  were  made 
good.  Three  actual  samples  of  powdered  glass  in  food 
were  found;  two  actual  cases  of  Red  Cross  bandages  con- 
taining deleterious  substances  also  were  found;  there  was 
one  instance  of  insidious  printed  propaganda  distributed 
by  means  of  knitted  work;  and  there  was  a  very  distinct 
trail  of  Sinn  Feiners  working  in  conjunction  with  the 
enemy.  To  these  may  be  added  such  instances  of  investiga- 
tion as  are  given  below. 

Mr.  X,  a  minister  of  the  gospel,  was  very  offensive  in 
his  pacifism.  He  refused  permission  for  the  display  of  an 
American  flag  in  his  church,  or  even  a  service  flag,  and 
would  not  allow  the  church  to  be  used  for  Red  Cross  work. 


228  THE  WEB 

He  was  forced  to  resign,  his  particular  brand  of  piety  not 
seeming  to  track  with  the  creed  of  his  congregation.  The 
quality  of  his  pacifism  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that 
he  excused  the  Germans  for  their  atrocities,  saying  that 
if  France  and  Belgium  had  not  resisted,  there  never  would 
have  been  any  atrocities !  This  man  applied  for  a  position 
to  go  to  France  in  Government  war  work.  His  application 
was  refused. 

It  is,  of  course,  well  known  that  the  U.  S.  troops  in  large 
part  sailed  from  the  vicinity  of  the  City  of  New  York,  or 
upper  New  Jersey.  Of  course,  also,  all  the  preparations 
for  this  war,  all  of  the  expense  of  it,  all  the  time  and 
trouble  of  it,  focused  exactly  on  the  number  of  troops  we 
actually  could  get  on  the  way.  The  utmost  secrecy  was 
maintained  by  our  Government  as  to  the  number  of  troops, 
the  ships  that  carried  them,  and  the  time  and  place  of 
sailing.  The  mother  of  a  boy  on  his  way  to  France  did 
not  know  he  had  sailed  until  a  curt  card  from  the  other 
side  of  the  water  told  her  that  he  was  in  France.  Prac- 
tically all  the  people  of  the  United  States,  however,  ac- 
cepted this  secrecy  as  a  necessary  war  measure  —  that 
being  obviously  and  permanently  necessary  in  this  war, 
where  the  risks  of  the  sea  included  the  danger  of  the 
German  submarine. 

Naturally,  also,  the  German  spies  on  this  side  of  the 
water  would  do  everything  in  their  power  to  le^rn  pre- 
cisely the  facts  which  our  Government  sought  to  conceal 
—  the  number  of  troops  going  over,  the  times  of  sailings 
of  the  transports,  and  so  forth.  Naturally  also,  our  system 
of  espionage  —  the  divisions  of  Military  Intelligence,  Naval 
Intelligence,  Department  of  Justice,  and  the  auxiliary  work 
of  the  American  Protective  League  —  would  -do  all  they 
could  to  prevent  German  espionage  from  attaining  its  own 
purpose  in  regard  to  this  knowledge. 

When  the  Government  seized  the  Port  of  Embarkation 
at  Hoboken,  much  interest  was  shown  in  the  former  Ham- 
burg-American and  North  German  Lloyd  line  steamers 
located  there.  There  were  numerous  rumors  that  these 
boats  were  to  be  blown  up  by  the  Germans.  Of  these, 
the  largest  was  the  Vaterland,  which  was  re-christened 
Leviathan. 


THE  STORY  OF  NEWARK  229 

All  this  section,  along  the  Jersey  Palisades,  near  Ho- 
boken,  is  strong  in  sympathy  for  Germany.  Nearly  all  of 
the  population  is  from  Germany  or  of  German  parentage 
and  here  was  this  steamer,  the  biggest  of  all  the  boats,  and 
long  the  pride  of  the  Germans.  It  was  not  to  be  expected 
that  the  New  Jersey  Germans  would  feel  pleasant  about 
its  present  status.  These  local  Germans  boasted  that  they 
had  been  through  these  boats  after  our  Government  took 
them  over.  They  told  stories  of  what  the  Government  was 
■doing  with  them  and  what  they  were  going  to  do  them- 
selves so  that  the  boats  would  never  sail  or  never  get 
across.  The  history  of  other  ships  which  took  fire  in  mid- 
ocean,  or  were  blown  up  by  concealed  explosives  is  referred 
to  elsewhere.  It  always  was  sufficient  to  make  the  sailing 
of  any  transport  a  matter  of  great  uneasiness. 

An  A.  P.  L.  operative  wanted  to  know  what  these  Ger- 
mans were  doing  regarding  the  Leviathan.  Of  course,  the 
boat  was  supposed  to  be  absolutely  guarded  against  entry 
by  any  stranger.  This  man,  however,  went  to  the  gate 
and  asked  for  the  Commandant  by  nickname.  The  guard 
supposed  he  must  be  a  friend  of  the  Commandant,  because 
of  his  familiarity,  and  naively  let  him  through.  The  opera- 
tive walked  up  and  down  the  pier  wondering  how  he  could 
get  on  board,  for  he  saw  guards  at  the  gangway.  There 
w^as  a  pile  of  mailbags  on  the  dock,  so  the  operative  stole 
over  that  way,  picked  up  a  mail  sack  and  threw  it  over  his 
shoulder.  Near  the  gangway  there  was  a  group  of  soldiers 
and  sailors  engaged  in  an  argument.  As  the  operative 
approached,  they  separated,  and  he  Avent  through.  He  w^as 
dressed  in  civilian  clothes,  and  had  on  a  derby  hat,  but 
these  didj  not  seem  to  be  suspicious  facts.  The  operative 
walked  on  up  the  gangplank  unmolested,  and  roamed  all 
over  the  boat  from  top  to  bottom,  still  carrying  the  mail- 
bag.  Having  done  what  any  German  could  have  done  in 
the  same  circumstances,  he  started  out,  but  near  the  gang- 
way was  stopped  by  a  man  who  wore  a  watchman's  badge, 
and  who  spoke  w4th  a  noticeable  German  accent.  This 
man  stopped  the  operative,  who,  upon  being  asked  where 
he  was  going,  replied  that  he  was  going  off  the  boat.  The 
watchman  told  him  to  get  off  in  a  hurry.  He  was  still 
carrying  his  U.  S.  mail  sack,  which  he  replaced  on  the 


230  THE  WEB 

pile  where  he  had  got  it.  After  that,  he  strolled  out  to 
the!  street  again,  satisfied  that  the  guard  around  the 
Leviathan  might  have  been  a  trifle  more  airtight. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  while  the  sailing  dates  of  the 
Leviatlian  were  jealously  guarded,  bets  were  made  by 
the  Germans  on  her  sailing  time  out  and  back.  Word 
came  to  an  A.  P.  L.  man  that  the  Leviathan  was  going  to 
sail  at  12:15  the  next  day.  As  this  came  from  German 
sources,  it  seemed  a  useful  thing  to  have  the  Government 
alter  the  sailing  hour.  The  operative  in  this  case  strolled 
around  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Leviathan's  pier  and  talked 
with  sailors,  who  freely  told  him  the  sailing  hour.  Then, 
in  order  to  mystify  the  Government  officers,  the  operative 
called  up  a  certain  Department  and  said  over  the  'phone 
that  he  was  an  Intelligence  official  of  the  Imperial  German 
Navy,  and  wanted  to  know  if  it  was  true  that  the 
Leviathan  was  to  sail  at  12 :15  the  next  day.  This  caused 
some  excitement.  The  operative  then  told  whom  he  was, 
explaining  that  he  had  got  that  knowledge  himself  the  pre- 
vious evening.  As  a  result,  the  sailing  hour  was  changed 
several  hours,  and  the  Leviatlian  got  off  safely. 

Again,  there  were  a  great  many  rumors  regarding  the 
numbers  of  troops  carried  by  this  big  transport.  We  did 
not  want  Germany  to  know  how  many  men  we  really  were 
shipping,  and  we  rather  thought  that  no  one  ever  could 
know.  An  A.  P.  L.  operative  was  able  to  make  a  very 
close  guess  under  rather  singular  circumstances.  Since 
he  could  have  done  so,  perhaps  a  German  spy  might  have 
done  as  much  had  he  an  equally  sharp  wit. 

This  instance  really  started  in  a  practical  joke.  The 
jokers  suggested  to  a  certain  young  husband,  who  had  to 
sit  up  late  several  nights  with  a  crying  baby,  that  he  might 
pass  the  time  counting  the  cars  of  troop  trains  which 
passed  in  front  of  his  house.  In  all  seriousness,  the  young 
man  did  do  this,  checking  each  car  by  the  bumps  it  made 
on  the  railroad  frogs.  He  really  counted  in  this  way  with 
very  fair  accuracy  the  number  of  cars  carrying  troops 
for  the  Leviatlian' s  sailing.  As  everyone  knew  about  how 
many  troops  were  in  each  car,  this  operative  figuredi  that 
there  would  be  about  12,000  troops.  This  was  reported 
to  the  Government,  but  was  never  checked  out,  so  that 


THE  STORY  OF  NEWARK  231 

A.  P.  L.  still  wants  to  know  whether  they  were  good  de- 
tectives or  not. 

There  was  a  member  of  the  Division  who  sold  automo- 
bile tires.  A  Naval  officer  came  to  him  to  buy  a  tire,  and 
wanted  to  know  if  the  tire  could  not  get  to  the  boat  that 
afternoon.  This  salesman  suggested  the  next  morning  at 
noon.  The  officer  innocently  said  that  he  would  have 
sailed  by  that  time.  He  also  named  his  boat,  the  LeviatJian. 
This  salesman  asked  how  it  would  do  to  have  the  tire  ready 
when  the  ship  came  back,  and  asked:  how  long  it  would  be. 
The  officer  said  sixteen  and  a  half  days  —  which  tallied 
with  the  former  Leviathan  record  of  seventeen  days.  The 
salesman  also  learned  that  the  stop  at  Bordeaux  was  from 
forty  to  seventy-two  hours.  Incidentally,  he  also  learned 
that  the  boat  carried  12,000  troops,  had  five  hundred  offi- 
cers and  a  crew  of  fifteen  hundred. 

This  figure  of  12,000  troops  checks  perfectly  with  the 
A.  P.  L.  estimate  made  by  the  baby-carrying  member.  This 
tire-hunting  officer  of  the  boat  also  toldj  a  great  many 
things  which  he  ought  not  to  have  told  anyone.  He  told 
the  means  used  to  protect  the  Leviathan  against  U-boats, 
saying  that  the  ship  depended  mostly  on  her  speed.  He 
said  the  ship  drew  only  forty-two  feet  of  water,  so  it  had 
not  been  necessary  to  dredge  the  channel  at  Bordeaux. 
The  operative  then  asked  the  officer  how  late  he  could 
receive  the  tire,  and  was  told  about  two  hours  before  sail- 
ing. *'You  can  refer  to  your  local  newspapers  and  figure 
on  fifteen  minutes  after  the  tide  begins  to  go  out,"  he  said. 
This,  of  course,  was  so  that  the  boat  could  get  the  benefit 
of  the  ebb  tide  in  warping  out. 

From  these  facts,  both  the  Military  and  Naval  Intelli- 
gence were  able  to  stop  such  leaks  of  information,  and 
stiffened  up  the  guarding  of  ships  and  cargo,  besides  giv- 
ing, in  many  ways,  a  far  greater  degree  of  protection  to 
the  task  of  embarkation.  It  is  thought  that  the  League 
investigations  caused  recommendation  to  be  made  regard- 
ing more  secrecy  in  regard  to  embarkation.  The  Armistice 
cut  off  these  matters.  Sufficient  has  been  shown  here,  how- 
ever, to  indicate  how  an  enemy  might  sometimes  get  infor- 
mation. 

There  did  not  seem  to  be  much  to  start  with  in  this  case 


232  THE  WEB 

which  originated  in  Northern  New  Jersey,  nor  indeed  was 
there  much  left  of  the  case  by  the  time  it  was  finished. 
Yet  the  case  itself  had  the  makings  of  quite  a  big  aifair. 

A  report  came  in  that  Otto  B ,  starter  for  the  X.  Y.  Z. 

Transit  Company,  was  pro-German.  Such  reports  came  in 
all  the  time,  so  that  there  were  usually  fifty  or  sixty  cases 
in  the  zone.  Two  days  later  came  in  more  facts  from 
operative  C-123.     He  had  gotten  pretty  thick  with  Herr 

B by  saying  that   Germany  seemed  to  be  gaining, 

and  that  this  new^s  would  please  his  wife,  who  was  German 

herself.     Herr  B was  much  pleased  to  learn  this, 

and  w^ent  on  to  unbosom  himself.  Several  such  meetings 
enabled  C-123  to  learn  pretty  much  everything  he  desired. 

Herr  B wanted  to  do  something  for  the  Father- 
land and  the  Kaiser.  He  was  sure  he  could  do  something 
if  he  had  some  help.    The  one  danger  was  that,  in  talking 

to  almost  anybody,  Herr  B might  be  talking  not  to 

a  representative  of  the  Kaiser  but  to  some  one  who  would 
report  him  to  the  United  States  Secret  Service.  Operative 
C-123  agreed  with  him  as  to  this,  and  gravely  told  him  he 
ought  to  be  very  careful.  But  he  said  he  knew  a  man  that 
could  be  trusted,  and  he  would  bring  him  around  so  that 
they  could  talk  it  over,  and  perhaps  the  two  of  them 
could  do  something  for  the  Kaiser. 

The  name  of  this  new  man  was  Schultz.  He  had  been 
in  Mexico  organizing  the  United  States  Germans  who  had 
fled'  to  Mexico.  He  had  been  a  member  of  the  Dantzig 
Dragoons,  and  had  traveled  all  through  Germany,  and  his 
experiences  in  the  Army  there  had  gotten  him  his  place 
as  German  propagandist  of  Mexico.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  Imperial  German  Espionage  System  —  and  he  had  his 
Wilhelmstrasse  card  to  show  it.  He  always  carried  it 
pinned  to  his  underclothing.  It  was  a  great  day  for  Otto, 
the  train  dispatcher.  At  last  he  had  some  trusted  fellow- 
Germans  in  whom  he  could  confide!  He  and  Schultz 
talkedi  bombs  and  that  sort  of  thing  until  midnight.    Herr 

B told  Schultz:     **You  can  depend  on  me  —  I  am 

the  real  stuff  —  I  can  get  a  thousand  men  back  of  me 
since  I  know  I  have  got  a  man  from  the  German  Govern- 
ment here.*' 


THE  STORY  OF  NEWARK  233 

Talks  between  these  three  gentlemen  were  going  on  in 
fine  shape  at  the  time  the  Armistice  was  signed.     As  a 

matter  of  fact,  Otto  B is  still  flagging  trains  at  the 

old  railroad  crossing,  and  the  League  is  recommending  his 
prosecution  and  the  revocation  of  his  citizenship,  because 
it  certainly  had  proof  of  his  unfitness  to  live  in  the  United 
States.  It  hardly  seems  necessary  to  add  that  *'Schultz" 
was  an  A.  P.  L.  operative  also.  His  ''credentials"  were 
made  in  the  United  States  and  not  in  Germany,  having 
been  copied  from  those  captured  on  a  real  agent  of  the 
Kaiser. 

There  was  another  near-case,  one  which  almost  became 
a  real  one,  in  Northern  New  Jersey  Division,  which,  at 
the  first,  looked  like  scores  that  had  preceded  it  and  scores 

that  followed  it.    It  had  to  do  with  one  K ,  reported 

rabid  against  America,  although  employed  in  doing  essen- 
tial Government  work.  This  might  have  been  a  spite  case, 
or  a  case  of  remarks  made  before  we  went  into  the  war, 
or  still  more  possibly  something  said  before  the  amended 
Espionage  Act  was  passed.  However,  member  C-891  went 
out  on  the  case  to  see  what  he  could  find  about  K . 

The  latter  had  a  factory  of  his  own,  and  when  found, 
seemed  to  be  disposed  to  talk.  The  operative  speaks  a 
perfect  German,  and  has  a  German  look.  The  two  got  on 
handsomely.  The  operative  was  surprised  to  find  that 
K talked  so  freely  and  to  a  stranger.  Another  mem- 
ber of  the  League,  C-1378,  also  of  German  parentage,  went 

with  C-891  a  few  days  later  to  visit  K again.     That 

gentleman  Avas  more  bitter  than  ever  against  America.  He 
said,  among  other  things,  that  if  he  heard  that  President 
Wilson  had  been  shot,  he  would  be  so  glad  that  he  would 
celebrate  it  by  getting  too  drunk  to  see.  And  there  was 
very  much  more  talk  of  that  nature. 

A  few  days  later,  K had  cause  to  regret  his  dis- 
position to  talk.  He  was  brought  before  a  United  States 
Commissioner  on  a  warrant,  and  spent  a  good  night  in  jail 
before  he  could  find  bail.  The  next  day,  he  being  a  man 
of  means,  he  engaged  a  lawyer.  The  Armistice  ended  these 
activities,  as  it  did  so  many  others.  The  hearing  was  held 
on  the  morning  of  November  7  —  the  first  news  of  the 
Armistice,  later  confirmed.     Since  that  time,  A.  P.  L.  of 


234  THE  WEB 

Northern    New    Jersey    has    heard    nothing    about    Mr. 

K .      With   a   couple    million   others,    he   has   been 

allowed  to  sink  back  to  our  citizenship  —  just  as  poisonous, 
just  as  unregenerate,  just  as  little  fit  to  remain  in  this 
country.  It  was  understood  that  D.  J.  laid  down  a  rule 
that  testimony  secured  in  conversations  such  as  the  fore- 
going was  not  a  basis  of  prosecution.     Perhaps  it  would 

have  been  better  to  wait  until  Mr.  K had  really  shot 

somebody  or  blown  up  a  ship  or  so. 

Of  active  sympathizers  with  the  enemy,  Northern  New 
Jersey  did  not  lack.  A  thousand  cases  could  be  given. 
One  will  serve.  In  July,  1918,  the  office  learned  of  sus- 
picious activities  on  the  part  of  some  of  these  sympathizers. 

A  Mr.  E was  told  by  Miss  G ,  a  young  woman 

of  foreign  birth,  that  the  people  she  lived  with  had  active 
connections  with  the  enemy.  Especially  was  this  true  in 
the  case  of  one  S ,  who  had  Central  and  South  Ameri- 
can relations.  This  latter  man  was  found  to  be  of  Ameri- 
can birth  and  German  parentage  —  which,  in  a  goodj  many 
cases,  would  leave  him  German.  He  had  been  a  traveler, 
and  a  son  of  his  had  been  born  in  Kingston,  Jamaica, 
although  this  son  was  at  present  in  the  U.  S.  Army.    This 

Mr.  S was  found  to  be  identified  with  a  New  York 

concern  which  had  sent  him  to  Jamaica  to  get  the  release 
there  of  a  man  jailed  by  the  English  authorities  for  alleged 
implication  in  the  coaling  of  German  raiders  at  sea.    That 

did  not  look  any  too  good  for  Mr.  S of  itself.     He 

also  had  in  his  employ  a  stenographer  whose  husband,  a 

Mr.  W ,  had  been  employed  in  an  alleged  poisoning 

of  the  reservoir  at  Kingston,  Jamaica. 

These  things  led  up  to  the  case  of  the  subject,  who  will 

be  called  P — .     This  man  had  lived  with  S for 

a  time.     P — ■ came  to  this  country  from  Germany  in 

1907,  and  applied  for  his  first  naturalization  papers  — 
please  note  the  date  —  August  1,  1914.  He  was  thirty-five 
years  of  age,  well  educated,  unmarried,  and  without  de- 
pendents. He  had  served  in  the  German  Army,  but  was 
not  a  reservist.  In  his  alien  enemy  questionnaire,  he  left 
out  the  name  of  one  of  his  previous  employers,  which  was 
found  to  have  been  an  importing  concern  with  a  German 
name,  with  connections  in  Kingston,  Jamaica,  doing  busi- 


THE  STORY  OF  NEWARK  235 

ness  in  Central  and  South  America.  This  German  concern 
had  many  different  names.  Some  of  its  personnel  were 
interned  at  Panama.  A  member  of  the  concern  had  been 
interned  in  the  United  States  for  alleged  provisioning  of 
German  raiders  at  sea.  This  made  the  stage  set  for  a 
rather  interesting  investigation.  Operatives  discovered 
that  the  principal  men  of  this  concern  were  at  large, 
and  were  doing  business  under  yet  another  name.     They 

also  discovered  that  this  Mr.  S was  affiliated  with 

the  work  in  a  downtown  office  building  in  New  York  City. 

During  1912,  or  earlier,  Mr.  S had  introduced  Mr. 

P to  the  President  of  an  iron  and  steel  concern,  who 

took  him  into  employ  as  Treasurer  and  gave  him  a  block  of 

shares.      The   alien   enemy   P seemed   to   get   along 

pretty  well  for  a  time,  but  got  in  wrong  with  the  firm 
through  a  transaction  which  they  did  not  approve.  The^ 
Secretary  of  the  firm  was  verj^  friendly  to  the  alien  enemy 

P .     This  Secretary  was  found  to  be  connected  by 

marriage  with  one  of  the  foremost  electrical  inventors  of 
the  age,  who  had  been  very  active  in  the  development  of 
devices  for  our  Army  and  Navy.  Observe  that  this  man 
was  a  particular  confidant  of  the  unnaturalized  German 
P ,  formerly  of  the  German  Army. 

The  original  Mr.  S ,  who  had  acted  as  a  voucher 

for  P ,  had  stated  that  he  could  get  money  to  the 

enemy,  through  the  War  Department.  His  father  had 
stock  in  a  concern  which  was  taken  over  by  our  Alien 

Enemy  Custodian.     The  not  very  mysterious  Mr.  P 

removed  during  June,  1918,  leaving  New  York  without 
notifying  the  Chief  of  Police,  as  is  required.  He  was 
located  doing  business  in  an  office  in  down-town  New  York 
City  as  a  broker,  although  his  name  was  not  listed  in  the 
telephone  directory.  He  was  apparently  trading  under  the 
name  of  L.  P.  &  Company.  The  A.  P.  L.  has  found  that 
his  mother  is  living  in  Germany  and  is  reported  to  be 

wealthy.    P has  pretended  that  he  was  a  traveling 

salesman,  which  he  was  not.  He  endeavored  to  avoid  meet- 
ing people  whom  he  knew  while  residing  in  northern  New 
Jersey.    His  residence  was  located  in  another  state. 

This  case  also  shows  how  much  sometimes  may  be  dis- 
covered by  way  of  a  tangled  skein,  even  if  no  one  is  shot 


236  THE  WEB 

at  sunrise.     Mr.   S was  visited  at  liis  office  by  an 

A.  P.  L.  man,  who  did  not  make  himself  Imown.  He  was 
very  much  exercised  over  the  fact  that  the  place  of  his 
business  was  known.  He  requested  that  his  personal  and 
business  relations  should  not  be  linked^  up  together.     Mr. 

P is  still  in  business  in  New  York,  no  doubt  waiting 

for  the  next  war. 

Northern  New  Jersey  was  the  field  for  many  reports  of 
mysterious  signal  lights  along  the  seacoast.  Most  of  these 
stories  had  small  foundation,  but  at  least  one  of  these 
would  have  come  to  something  had  not  the  Armistice  cut 
off  the  investigation.  In  this  case,  operators  were  some- 
times out  for  hours  watching  for  the  flashlights,  and  once 
a  squad  of  military  reserves  lay  on  w^atch  practically  all 
night  around  a  suspect's  house.  They  discovered  night 
signaling  with  a  search-light  and  calcium-light  at  different 
places  over  the  Northeastern  part  of  Bergen  County,  and 
there  seemed  to  be  evidence  of  a  system  of  signaling  ex- 
tending from  the  Hudson  River  in  New  Jersey,  across 
Bergen  County  up  into  the  Ramapo  Mountains  and  the 
Greenwood  Lake  district  in  New  York.  The  observers 
used  surveying  transits  for  spotting  the  lights,  and  by 
means  of  this  instrument,  were  able  to  obtain  the  angles  of 
the  lights.  These  angles  were  then  plotted,  and  the  inter- 
section points  gave  approximately  the  location  of  the  light. 
This  work  resulted  in  the  location  of  three  individuals, 
but  at  about  this  time  the  Armistice  ended  the  signals  and 
the  apparent  necessity  for  watching  them.  There  had  been 
discovered,  however,  some  real  foundation  for  a  signal  light 
scare  in  this  district. 

Ridgewood  had  another  strange  case  —  a  German  who 
claimed  to  be  so  sick  that  he  could  not  live  long  —  who 
wanted  to  go  back  home  in  order  to  die  in  the  dear  old 
Fatherland.  Medical  examination  showed  that  he  probably 
would  die  sometime,  but  the  A.  P.  L.  examination  led  to 
the  refusal  of  his  passports,  it  being  believed  that  he  might 
carry  something  to  Germany  besides  fatal  disease. 

Newark,  the  capital  of  Northern  New  Jersey'  Division, 
had  a  very  baffling  pro-German  case  where  it  was  difficult 
to  find  anything  on  which  a  legal  prosecution  could  be 
brought.     The  facts  were  such  as  resulted  in  the  social 


THE  STORY  OF  NEWARK  237 

ostracism  of  the  family,  so  that  their  disloyalty,  after  all, 
had  a   certain  punishment,   although  it   did  not  hit  the 

crime.    H and  his  wife  were  members  of  a  Presbj^- 

terian  Church,  and  were  so  openly  pro-German  that  every- 
body ceased  to  have  anything  to  do  with  them.  At  a 
luncheon  given  at  the  H householdj  the  favors  dis- 
tributed to  a  dozen  ladies  consisted  of  nice  pictures  of 
Kaiser  Wilhelm.  One  of  the  guests  then  suggested  that 
it  would  be  a  nice  thing  to  sing  the  Star  Spangled  Banner, 

which  did  not  please  Mrs.  H at  all.     The  head  of 

this  household  was  educated  in  Germany,  and  married  a 
German  woman  whose  relatives  were  high  in  the  German 
army.  They  had  a  daughter  who  was  engaged  to  an 
American,   but  the   latter  broke   off  the   engagement   on 

account  of  the  pro-Germanism  of  the  H family.    The 

social  ostracism  really  amounted  to  isolation,  so  that  it  was 
impossible  to  hear  of  any  disloyal  utterances  which  would 
warrant  governmental  action,  nor  indeed  any  utterances 
at  all.     The  town  was  through  with  them. 

Northern  New  Jersey  probably  has  the  laziest  slacker  in 
the  world.  Ilis  name  is  M ,  and  at  one  time  he  re- 
sided in  New  York.  He  had  an  Emergency  Fleet  classifica- 
tion card,  but  only  worked  two  or  three  days  out  of  the 
week  and  spent  most  of  his  time  at  home  in  bed.  He 
thought  he  would  rather  go  South  where  the  climate  was 
better.  He  was  rated  as  so  lazy  that  he  was  shifted  from 
one  government  job  to  another  —  and  that  certainly  is 
going  some,  in  view  of  what  is  sometimes  done  in  govern- 
ment service.  He  was  so  lazy  that  he  used  to  go  to  bed 
with  his  shoes  on,  and  would-  leave  his  light  burning  all 
night  because  he  was  too  tired  to  put  it  out.  This  champion 
rester  carried  a  registration  card,  but  he  had  been  given 
limited  service  on  account  of  calloused  feet.  From  the 
description  of  him,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  his  feet  got 
calloused ;  but  at  least  that  is  what  the  report  says. 

New  Jersey  had  a  very  blood-curdling  citizen  who  dwelt 

in  Newark  under  the  name  of  H.  B .    He  carried  an 

American  name  although  he  was  bom  in  Italy  about  forty- 
two  years  ago.  He  came  to  America  thirty  years  ago, 
when  he  was  a  small  boy,  in  order  to  escape  punishment 
for  having  killed  a  priest.    He  never  dared  to  return  to 


238  THE  WEB 

Italy,  but  remained  an  alien  in  this  country  and  an  enemy 
to  about  everything  going.  He  was  a  very  ardent  I.  W.  W. 
man,  and  declared  that  there  were  enough  I.  W.  W.  men 
in  the  Army  and  outside  to  blow  up  the  country  if  they 
liked,  —  a  very  good  example  of  the  flourishing  Bolshevik 

element  in  America.     Mr.  B claimed  that  he  had 

stabbed  a  detective  in  Providence,  R.  I.,  a  year  or  so  ago 
during  an  I.  W.  W.  celebration;  hence  he  did  not  like  to 
visit  Providence  either.  He  told  how  in  another  place  he 
had  cut  out  a  man's  intestines,  and  when  asked  if  the  man 
died,  remarked :  ' '  What  in  hell  do  you  suppose  I  am  here 
for?"  This  pleasant  gentleman  often  went  to  Paterson 
and  New  York  to  attend  I.  W.  W.  meetings  there.     He 

hoped  that  '*  every soldier  the  U.  S.  sent  over 

would  be  blown  up  by  submarines  and  drowned  like  rats, 
and  that  if  any  did  get  across,  he  hoped  the  Germans 
would  choke  or  shoot  them  to  death."  He  said  he  would 
like  to  get  his  fingers  on  President  Wilson's  throat.  It 
was  his  pleasant  practice  to  tear  American  flags  from  the 
coats  of  persons  wearing  them.  His  home  w^as  searched, 
and  some  clock-works  were  found  without  any  dials  and 
hands,  such  as  have  been  known  to  be  used  with  bombs. 
It  seems  that  nothing  was  done  with  the  bloodthirsty  Mr. 

B after  all,  and  he  is  still  at  large. 

In  so  complex  an  office  as  that  of  the  Northern  New  Jer- 
sey Division,  which  much  resembles  that  of  New  York 
City,  Newark  alone  cleared  over  9,013  cases,  of  which 
twenty-five  per  cent  were  for  the  War  Department,  forty- 
five  per  cent  for  the  Department  of  Justice,  other  divisions 
of  A.  P.  L.  work  fifteen  per  cent,  and  original  cases  with 
New  Jersey  A.  P.  L.  fifteen  per  cent.  Most  of  this  work 
was  for  D.  J.,  but  there  was  much  cooperation  with  officers 
from  Naval  and  Military  Intelligence,  not  to  mention  the 
local  boards.  This  great  division  has  a  tangible  record  of 
4,563  cases  of  the  second  class,  those  handled  entirely  in 
local  units,  niaking  a  total  of  13,576  cases  sufficiently  defi- 
nite in  character  to  warrant  a  record.  As  to  the  actual 
investigations,  recorded  and  unrecorded,  they  would  with- 
out question  bring  up  the  total  of  northern  New  Jersey 
cases  above  30,000.  They  were  from  every  point  of  the 
compass  and  of  every  color  of  the  rainbow. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  STORY  OP  PITTSBURGH 

Another  Storm  Center  —  Greatest  Concentration  of  War 
Work  in  the  United  States  —  The  Tower  of  Babel  and  How 
it  was  Held  Safe  —  No  I.  W.  W.  Need  Apply. 

Pittsburgh  also  was  expected  to  be  an  alien  storm  center 
when  the  United  States  declared  war  upon  Germany.  This 
uneasiness  was  natural  and  to  be  expected.  Most  of  our 
great  iron  and  steel  plants  were  located  there,  and  nu- 
merous other  important  industries  as  well.  These  plants 
were  vital  to  our  success  in  the  war,  as  were  the  great 
coal  mines  in  the  adjacent  districts.  It  was  felt  on  every 
side  that  the  enemy  would  strike  here  if  he  struck  at  all. 
But  the  main  cause  for  apprehension  lay  in  the  fact  that 
Pittsburgh  had  an  enormous  foreign  population,  especially 
from  countries  of  the  central  allies,  and  the  presence  of 
this  element  in  its  industries  was  feared  as  a  source  of 
dynamite,  sabotage  and  labor  troubles.  The  fact  that  Pitts- 
burgh and  Western  Pennsylvania  throughout  the  war  re- 
mained practically  free  from  labor  disturbances  and  war 
munition  destruction,  so  troublesome  in  other  sections, 
was  due  to  the  splendid  intelligence  service  rendered  by 
the  American  Protective  League,  in  close  cooperation  with 
the  United  States  Department  of  Justice  and  Naval  and 
Military  Intelligence  Bureaus.  The  Smoky  City  sends  in 
a  very  clean  report. 

Pittsburgh  operated  the  highest  percentage  on  war  work 
of  any  district  in  the  United  States.  It  filled  over  sixty- 
five  per  cent  of  all  the  steel  contracts  placed  by  the  Ord- 
nance Department,  in  addition  to  the  tremendous  output 
of  munitions  and  other  war  materials  for  the  Entente 
Allies.  It  was  estimated  that  the  district  was  runninff 
from  sixty  to  seventy  per  cent  on  war  work  at  the  tinr  ; 


240  THE  WEB 

of  the  Armistice,  that  at  least  5,000  plants,  many  of  them 
mammoth  in  size,  were  filling  Government  orders,  and  over 
one  million  employees  were  engaged  in  large  part  in  help- 
ing win  the  war.  During  the  latter  part  of  hostilities  the 
daily  labor  shortage  was  over  16,000.  It  was  vital  to  the 
United  States  and  to  the  Entente  Allies  that  the  Pittsburgh 
District  should  be  permitted  to  conduct  unmolested  its 
great  industries  of  the  war,  and  that  this  was  possible  was 
due  in  a  large  measure  to  the  American  Protective  League. 

A  few  days  after  the  war  was  declared,  John  W.  Weib- 
ley,  a  well  known  Pittsburgh  business  man,  was  asked  to 
organize  a  Division  of  the  American  Protective  League  in 
the  twenty-seven  counties  of  Western  Pennsylvania,  com- 
prising the  United  States  Western  Judicial  District.  Mr. 
Weibley  conferred  with  Mr.  Robert  S.  Judge,  Special  Agent 
in  Charge  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation,  Department  of 
Justice,  to  learn  if  the  Government  was  in  need  of  such 
an  organization.  When  assured  that  it  was,  Mr.  Weibley 
began  the  formation  of  a  branch  for  this  district. 

Eepresentatives  of  the  railroads  and  other  important 
corporations  were  called  into  conference  and  were  asked 
to  cooperate,  and  within  an  amazingly  short  time  the 
American  Protective  League  had  active  agents  in  every 
county,  township,  city,  town  and  village  in  the  entire 
district.  In  the  case  of  Pittsburgh,  the  operating  head- 
quarters, this  plan  of  organization  was  worked  out  so 
minutely  that  an  active  agent  representing  the  League,  and 
in  constant  communication  with  it,  was  located  in  every 
voting  precinct,  and  where  there  were  concentrations  of 
the  foreign  element,  these  agents  were  to  be  found  in  prac- 
tically every  city  block. 

Mr.  Weibley  personally  perfected  and  maintained  from 
Pittsburgh  this  network  throughout  the  District.  Mr. 
Ralph  B.  Montgomery  directed  the  work  in  Pittsburgh, 
each  ward  being  placed  in  charge  of  a  captain  who  reported 
to  him,  and  each  captain  having  his  separate  lieutenants 
with  agents  in  every  election  precinct.  Mr.  Raymond  H. 
Allen,  assisted  by  Mr.  William  S.  Masten,  directed  the 
operation  of  the  intelligence  activities  in  the  outlying 
counties. 

Frequent  meetings  of  ward  captains  and  district  lieu- 


THE  STORY  OF  PITTSBURGH  241 

tenants  were  held  to  hear  suggestions  from  representa- 
tives of  the  Government.  They  were  thus  kept  familiar 
with  the  latest  happenings  and  knew  what  precautions  to 
take  to  make  their  work  effective. 

The  story  of  the  Pittsburgh  Division,  as  it  is  related  in 
these  pages  by  its  Chief,  is  the  story  of  a  program  of 
action,  thoughtfully  conceived,  carefully  and  efficiently 
executed,  and  successful  beyond  all  expectations.  Mr. 
Weibley  says  in  his  report: 

A  splendid  esprit  de  corps  was  maintained,  as  the  organiza- 
tion in  Pittsburgh  was  limited  to  the  least  possible  number  in 
membership,  and  all  members  were  kept  busy.  Great  care  was 
used  in  the  selection  of  the  men  enrolled,  and  each  applicant 
was  subjected  to  a  rigid  investigation.  If  he  did  not  meet  the 
requirements,  his  application  was  rejected  or  placed  on  file  to 
provide  material  for  future  replacements  when  urgency  de- 
manded it.  As  a  result,  the  highest  interest  in  the  work  was 
maintained  throughout  the  war  period. 

The  Pittsburgh  district  being  the  most  important  manufac- 
turing, munition,  fuel  and  chemical  center  in  the  country,  was 
largely  dependent  for  its  labor  upon  foreigners,  many  of  whom 
came  from  countries  at  war  with  us.  It  therefore  was  impera- 
tive that  many  of  our  operatives  should  be  of  diverse  national- 
ities and  able  to  speak  many  tongues.  As  an  illustration,  it 
was  estimated  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  fully  fifty  per 
cent  of  the  Austrians  in  the  United  States  were  at  work  in 
vital  coal  mines,  coke  works,  steel  mills  and  other  industrial 
plants  within  a  radius  of  50  miles  of  Pittsburgh.  This  natur- 
ally made  the  alien  menace  a  grave  one,  but  so  intensive  was 
the  organization  of  the  League  that  not  an  important  indus- 
trial operation  in  the  great  district  was  without  one  or  more 
of  the  League  agents  as  active  employes.  In  fact,  intimate 
connection  was  maintained  with  every  alien  gathering  or  meet- 
ing place,  and  nothing  of  moment  was  planned  that  the  League 
oflBcials  were  not  soon  familiar  with.  In  fact,  in  one  of  the 
largest  industrial  concerns,  the  principal  official  was  chief  of 
a  league  unit,  and  many  of  his  trusted  employes  were  his  active 
associates. 

Pittsburgh  industrial  concerns,  vitally  interested  in  meeting 
the  Government's  demands  for  constantly  increasing  output  of 
war  material,  quickly  solved  the  question  of  finances,  and  the 
League  had  ample  funds  to  meet  every  requirement.  This 
made  possible  a  highly  efficient  office  organization  and  a  suite 
of  offices  on   the  fourth  floor  of  the   St.   Nicholas  Building, 


242  THE  WEB 

which  permitted  the  Department  of  Justice  and  Army  and 
Navy  Intelligence  Bureaus  also  to  locate  quarters  there, 
giving  a  compact  working  organization  reaching  every  branch 
of  the  service  and  promoting  that  intimate  contact  and  close 
cooperation  which  assured  success.  This  reciprocal  arrange- 
ment was  especially  effective  in  the  case  of  the  Department  of 
Justice,  which,  under  the  operation  of  Mr.  Judge,  rendered  and 
was  rendered  assistance  on  all  occasions. 

Director  Charles  B.  Prichard,  of  the  Pittsburgh  Department 
of  Public  Safety,  recognized  the  possibilities  of  effective  co- 
operation at  the  beginning,  and  there  was  not  a  moment  when 
the  patrolmen  and  municipal  detectives  did  not  do  everything 
possible  to  promote  the  success  of  the  League's  activities.  This 
spirit  of  patriotic  cooperation  on  the  part  of  the  municipal 
authorities  was  constantly  maintained  through  the  friendli- 
ness and  enthusiasm  of  Robert  J.  Alderdice,  superintendent 
of  police;  Magistrate  Walter  J.  Lloyd  and  Commissioners  of 
Police  Dye,  Kane,  Johnson  and  Calhoun.  Pittsburgh  certainly 
was  well  policed.  In  all,  the  League  maintained  constantly 
throughout  the  trying  period  over  2,000  active  operatives. 

The  effectiveness  of  this  far-reaching  organization  was  re- 
vealed in  the  complete  absence  of  those  disturbances  which 
had  been  feared.  At  the  outbreak  of  war,  troops  had  been 
located  at  bridges  and  important  public  works,  but  the  thor- 
ough manner  in  which  the  League  ferreted  out  those  who  were 
willing  to  foment  trouble  soon  rendered  unnecessary  the  guard- 
ing of  industrial  plants  by  soldiers  or  police.  There  were  no 
interruptions  to  the  enormous  output  of  munitions  and  manu- 
factured material,  nor  were  there  any  accidents,  explosions  or 
labor  troubles  traced  to  agents  of  the  enemy.  In  the  Pitts- 
burgh division  alone,  over  25,000  cases  were  investigated,  and 
every  person  upon  whom  the  least  suspicion  had  been  cast 
was  soon  rendered  powerless  to  do  harm.  Every  effort  was 
made  to  eliminate  troubles  by  preventing  alien  sympathizers 
from  perfecting  their  plans.  No  meetings  where  incendiary 
talk  could  be  fostered  were  permitted  to  continue,  and  it  was 
not  long  before  those  who  had  trouble  in  mind  realized  that  to 
continue  their  purpose  would  only  lead  to  their  own  downfall 
and  also  that  of  their  followers.  The  record  of  the  League  is 
a  tribute  to  the  wisdom  of  this  preventive  policy. 

It  was  feared  that  because  of  the  large  proportion  of  foreign- 
ers in  the  Pittsburgh  district,  the  wide  diversity  of  languages 
spoken,  and  the  great  illiteracy  among  certain  of  the  nation- 
alities, there  would  be  great  diflBculty  in  securing  proper  ob- 
servance of  the  Selective  Service  registration  regulations. 
During  the  Civil  War,  there  had  been  serious  draft  riots  in 


THE  STORY  OF  PITTSBURGH  243 

Pittsburgh,  when  the  percentage  of  foreigners  and  of  illiteracy- 
was  much  less.  The  American  Protective  League,  in  coopera- 
tion with  Mr.  Judge,  gave  the  widest  publicity  in  every  pos- 
sible way  to  the  plans  for  the  registration  and  the  penalty 
for  failure  to  comply.  The  result  of  this  work  of  preparation 
was  that  the  registration  was  effected  without  disorder,  and 
there  were  no  occasions  for  wholesale  arrests  to  bring  evaders 
or  possible  evaders  to  justice.  In  fact,  the  League's  policy 
was  to  prevent  trouble  by  advising  those  inclined  to  resent 
the  Government's  call,  and  to  make  no  arrests  until  other 
means  failed.  It  was  only  necessary  for  an  American  Pro- 
tective League  operative  to  appear  in  open  court  on  one  occa- 
sion. 

I.  W.  W.  propaganda  was  never  permitted  to  take  root. 
Work  to  eliminate  this  menace  occupied  a  large  amount  of 
the  League's  attention.  A  well  organized  scheme  of  the  So- 
cialists to  evade  the  Selective  Service  Law  was  broken  up 
when  a  prominent  radical  and  anarchist,  a  ringleader  in  the 
movement,  was  taken  from  a  meeting  he  was  about  to  address 
and  compelled  to  register.  The  facts  that  the  plans  of  the 
scheme  were  so  well  known  to  the  League  cooled  the  ardor  of 
the  malcontents. 

The  division  had  considerable  trouble  with  a  Jewish  family 
which  used  every  artifice  to  protect  a  lad  of  selective  service 
age  and  prevent  his  being  taken  into  the  army.  They  finally 
succeeded  in  spiriting  him  away,  but  he  was  convicted  of 
evading  the  draft,  and  by  pressure  on  his  family,  who  were 
placed  under  bond  to  return  him,  he  was  brought  back  to 
Pittsburgh,  sent  to  jail  for  six  months  and  then  inducted  into 
the  army. 

A  number  of  Italians,  through  one  of  their  societies,  con- 
ceived a  plan  to  make  money  by  filling  In  questionnaires  to 
enable  evasion  of  selective  service.  Two  ringleaders  were 
arrested,  and  the  chief  of  the  society  afterward  rendered  the 
League  valuable  service  in  preventing  labor  disturbances.  The 
League  also  uncovered  a  scheme  of  a  few  unscrupulous  lawyers 
to  extort  money  from  men  on  the  ground  that  their  advice 
would  permit  them  to  evade  the  law.  Arrests  were  not  neces- 
sary, as  the  warning  of  the  League  of  the  consequences  of  any 
continuance  of  the  practice  was  suflScient. 

The  League  was  able  to  break  the  backbone  of  a  dangerous 
plan  of  German  propaganda  through  an  international  organi- 
zation known  as  the  Geneva  Association,  whose  members  were 
principally  alien  enemies.  The  officers  were  arrested  and 
placed  under  bond  for  trial. 

One  very  dangerous  draft  evader  and  conscientious  objector 


244  THE  WEB 

was  arrested  and  court-martialed  after  considerable  trouble. 
He  was  Walter  L,  Hirschberg,  a  student  at  the  University  of 
Pittsburgh.  He  registered  for  selective  service,  but  wrote  and 
sent  to  his  draft  board  his  "declaration  of  rights,"  as  he  viewed 
them,  and  maintained  such  an  attitude  of  defiance  toward  the 
Government  that  it  was  decided  to  investigate  him.  In  the 
meantime  he  disappeared  and  was  traced  to  New  York,  where 
he  was  placed  under  observation.  He  was  detained  in  a  locked 
room  in  a  hotel  until  sufficient  evidence  could  be  obtained 
against  him,  but  was  so  shrewd  and  resourceful  that  he  out- 
witted his  captors  and  made  his  escape.  It  was  suspected  that 
he  had  gone  to  Chicago,  and  a  Pittsburgh  operative  went  there 
to  find  him.  The  use  of  commendable  strategy  secured  his 
arrest  and  his  return  to  Pittsburgh  at  the  point  of  a  revolver. 
Although  he  condemned  war  as  organized  murder,  he  carried 
a  loaded  revolver  and  blackjack  for  emergencies!  The  details 
of  his  escape  and  flight  read  like  a  trilling  story  of  Sherlock 
Holmes.  As  an  instance  of  his  resourcefulness  and  quick  wit, 
he  related  that  when  he  arrived  at  the  depot  in  Chicago,  he 
picked  up  a  newspaper  to  learn  quickly  the  lay  of  the  land. 
In  flaming  headlines  he  discovered  that  Chicago  police  that 
morning  were  making  wholesale  arrests  of  all  young  men 
without  registration  cards.  He  had  none.  He  espied  a  woman 
with  a  babe  and  a  large  traveling  case,  and  politely  offered  to 
assist  her  by  carrying  the  valise.  When  he  was  approached 
by  an  officer  and  requested  to  show  his  card,  he  quickly  re- 
torted, "Oh,  you  are  too  late.  You  can  see  that  this  is  my  wife 
and  child."  He  was  allowed  to  leave  the  depot  and  go  unmo- 
lested. He  went  into  hiding  until  the  scare  was  over.  Hirsch- 
berg was  sent  by  a  court-martial  at  Camp  Lee  to  the  Atlanta 
prison  for  twenty  years. 

**  Pittsburgh  had  some  amusing  incidents/'  says  the 
Chief  who  has  been  so  freely  quoted,  and  he  has  included 
several  of  them  in  his  report : 

There  was  little  bootlegging  as  liquor  dealers  endeavored  to 
comply  with  the  law  forbidding  the  sale  of  intoxicants  to 
soldiers  in  uniform  or  within  restricted  areas  adjacent  to  army 
camps.  One  negro  was  suspected,  and  upon  being  approached 
by  an  operative,  readily  agreed  to  sell  a  quart  of  "cold  tea" 
for  $9.00.  The  operative  bought — and  then  arrested  the  negro. 
When  the  "cold  tea"  was  tested,  it  was  found  to  be  just  what 
the  negro  said  it  was — cold  tea! 

An  alien  enemy  refused  to  register  and  was  taken  to  the 
League  headquarters  for  intensive  examination.    The  operative 


THE  STORY  OP  PITTSBURGH  245 

was  called  to  the  telephone  on  an  urgent  message  just  as  he 
entered  headquarters.  He  hastened  to  the  telephone,  leaving 
his  prisoner  where  he  could  not  escape.  When  he  had  finished, 
he  discovered  his  prisoner  missing.  It  transpired  that  another 
operative  had  come  into  headquarters,  and  the  prisoner  had 
asked  him  where  aliens  registered.  The  operative  asked 
"Why?"  and  when  he  was  informed  that  the  man  wished  to 
register,  he  obligingly  agreed  to  accompany  him  to  the  United 
States  Marshal's  office.  He  was  chagrined  to  find  that  he  had 
deprived  his  fellow  operative  of  a  case. 

A  peculiar  case  came  under  the  notice  of  the  League.  A 
Russian  of  draft  age,  whose  father  and  brothers  and  sisters 
were  naturalized,  claimed  exemption  on  the  ground  that  the 
father  had  not  taken  out  his  citizenship  papers  until  after  he, 
the  subject,  had  passed  his  majority,  and  he  had  never  lost  his 
Russian  citizenship.  The  objector  was  sent  to  jail,  but  the 
decision  was  rendered  that  his  point  was  well  taken  and  he 
was  released. 

The  League  did  a  wonderful  work  in  reconstructing  families, 
returning  wayward  sons  to  sorrowing  mothers,  and  in  re- 
habilitating young  men  whose  patriotism  and  fidelity  to  duty- 
were  lukewarm.  In  correcting  and  preventing  trouble  the 
American  Protective  League  performed  a  splendid  service  to 
the  Government. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  STORY  OF  BOSTON 

Massachusetts  Somewhat  Mixed  in  Safety  Measures  — 
Early  Embarrassment  of  Riches  —  Brief  History  of  A.  P. 
L.  —  Organization  and  Its  Success  —  Stories  of  the  Trail. 

After  A.  P.  L.  began  to  reach  out  into  a  wide  development 
by  reason  of  the  hard  work  of  the  National  Directors  at 
Washington,  D.  J.  in  that  town  began  to  cry  for  more.  It 
sent  out  to  all  its  special  agents  and  local  offices  a  circular 
explaining  the  great  assistance  which  the  League  was  capable 
of  rendering  the  Government,  and  asked  the  assignment  of  a 
special  agent  as  an  A.  P.  L.  detail  in  each  bureau  locality. 
This  circular  went  out  on  February  6,  1918,  and  Boston 
received  a  copy  duly,  as  well  as  the  request  of  the  Provost 
Marshal  General  to  the  Governor  of  Massachusetts  for  aid 
in  selective  service  matters.  At  that  time  there  was  no  divi- 
sion of  A.  P.  L.  organized  in  Boston.  A  few  days  later 
the  Massachusetts  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  which  had 
been  organized  and  active  ever  since  the  beginning  of  the 
war,  was  asked  to  interest  itself  to  the  extent  of  having 
some  good  man  start  a  Boston  division  of  A,  P.  L.  The 
latter  matter  was  slow  in  development  because  of  the  extent 
and  thoroughness  of  the  earlier  state  organization.  The  lat- 
ter had  been  taking  care  of  the  food,  fuel  and  other  admin- 
istrative work  in  assistance  to  the  Government.  The  feeling 
was  that  it  might  be  better  to  enlarge  the  Committee  of 
Public  Safety  than  to  start  any  new  body  which  might  be  a 
source  of  misunderstanding  and  friction. 

The  Department  of  Justice  work  in  Boston  during  the 
early  days  of  the  war  had  not  been  satisfactory.  Boston,  so 
far  fi*om  being  all  Puritan,  has  in  reality  one  of  the  most 
mixed  populations  in  the  country.  There  was  some  feeling 
against  the  Department  of  Justice  in  Boston,  and  some  feel- 
ing also  against  any  new  body  which  proposed  to  link  up 

246 


THE  STORY  OF  BOSTON  247 

closely  with  that  arm  of  the  Government.  D.  J.  had  been 
handling  for  itself  the  alien  enemy,  anti-military  and  propa- 
ganda work.  Yet  very  early  in  the  game  D.  J.  was  over- 
worked in  Boston,  as  it  had  been  in  every  other  great  city  in 
America,  and  it  really  needed  help.  There  were  a  great 
many  thinking  men  who  believed  that  it  could  be  much  re- 
lieved by  the  well-organized  support  of  the  banking,  real 
estate,  industrial  and  commercial  activities  of  the  city,  as  had 
been  the  case  all  over  the  United  States  where  A.  P.  L.  divi- 
sions had  been  created. 

Still  another  embarrassment,  however,  slowed  up  the  early 
activities  of  A.  P.  L.  in  Boston.  That  city  having  in  its 
population  many  French  Canadians,  Irish,  and  so  forth,  of 
the  Catholic  faith,  had  developed  a  sort  of  Church  problem, 
and  there  had  become  somewhat  active  the  organization 
known  as  the  '  *  A.  P.  A. "  —  whose  initials  are  somewhat 
close  to  those  of  A.  P.  L.  Many  thought  that  confusion 
between  the  two  organizations  would  result.  There  had  been, 
moreover,  in  this  state  of  independent  thought,  a  great  many 
other  **  Leagues  "  of  this,  that  and  the  other  sort;  so  that 
many  felt  that  Boston  had  about  enough  leagues  as  matters 
then  stood. 

At  about  this  time  Mr.  W.  Rodman  Peabody  of  the  Com- 
mittee of  Public  Safety  pointed  out  to  Washington  the  effi- 
cient manner  in  which  Mr.  Endicott  had  organized  that 
committee  throughout  the  State.  There  was  a  local  commit- 
tee of  safety  in  every  town,  and  also  a  state-wide  machine 
organizing  the  banking,  real  estate  and  other  important 
business  activities.  He  suggested  that  instead  of  a  division 
of  A.  P.  L.,  there  ought  to  be  a  sub-organization  "  organized 
by  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  at  the  request  of  the 
Department  of  Justice. ' '  It  was  understood  that  this  minor 
organization  should  have  the  general  features  of  A.  P.  L. 
and  should  act  as  the  Massachusetts  branch  of  A.  P.  L.  A 
list  of  good  names  was  suggested  of  persons  suitable  for  the 
organization  as  thus  outlined. 

Mr.  Elting  of  the  National  Directors,  however,  made  the 
point  that  an  arrangement  of  this  kind  would  have  a 
tendency  to  discredit  or  to  disintegrate  the  League  in  other 
cities.  The  Attorney-General  also  was  opposed  to  any  organ- 
ization which  did  not  show  the  exact  status  of  a  purely 


248  THE  WEB 

volunteer  body,  as  had  been  done  in  all  other  parts  of  the 
United  States. 

Mr.  Peabody  still  wanted  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety 
to  appear  as  the  parent  or  controlling  body,  and  a  lot  of 
valuable  time  was  wasted  over  this  tweedle-dee  argument.  A 
compromise  was  effected,  and  on  April  15,  1918,  the  National 
Directors  had  advice  that  the  Massachusetts  organization  was 
hiring  offices,  and  assumed  that  the  work  had  begun  and 
that  Boston  would  copy  as  nearly  as  possible  the  form  of 
letterhead  used  by  A.  P.  L.,  putting  the  names  of  the  National 
Directors  on  the  left-hand  side  and  substituting  the  words 
** Protective  League."  Underneath  that  was  to  appear  the 
legend:  "  Organized  by  the  Massachusetts  Public  Safety 
Committee  under  the  Direction  of  the  U.  S.  Department  of 
Justice,  Bureau  of  Investigation."  Boston  expressed  the 
belief  that  Washington  would  not  be  able  to  tell  the  differ- 
ence between  this  organization  and  any  other  so  far  as  loyalty 
and  efficiency  were  concerned,  although  sensible  of  the 
Washington  feeling  that  Massachusetts  was  starting  a  year 
late  and  might  be  suspected  of  lack  in  cooperation. 

All  concerned  having  thus  been  satisfied,  Massachusetts 
began  A.  P.  L.  work  a  trifle  late  in  the  game,  but  none  the 
less  proceeded  to  show  that  it  could  produce  as  effective  an 
organization  as  any  other  in  the  country.  Assistant  Chief 
H.  E.  Trumbull  makes  his  report  on  the  regulation  A.  P.  L. 
blanks  and  letterheads,  and  adds  the  following  data  as  to 
the  later  organization  of  A.  P.  L. : 

Mr.  Samuel  Wolcott  was  appointed  Chief,  and  we  took  two 
offices  at  45  Milk  Street,  in  the  same  building  with  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice.  Mr.  Trumbull,  then  a  volunteer  operative 
with  the  Department  proper,  consented  to  help  with  the  new 
organization,  and  Mr.  John  B.  Hanrahan  was  appointed  by 
the  Department  of  Justice  as  a  special  agent  to  oversee  the 
work  of  the  new  organization. 

A  few  weeks  later  we  found  that  the  work  was  too  great  to 
handle  in  such  small  quarters,  and  about  the  first  of  May  con- 
tracted for  half  of  the  eighth  floor  of  the  building,  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice  taking  the  other  half.  At  this  time  Mr. 
Trumbull  was  appointed  Assistant  Chief. 

As  a  nucleus  of  the  state  organization,  we  took  the  names 
of  the  men  who  had  been  doing  volunteer  work  for  the  United 


THE  STORY  OF  BOSTON  249 

States  Attorney's  oflEice,  and  we  proceeded  to  send  out  to  these 
men  the  work  that  came  in  their  territory,  and  as  they  proved 
satisfactory,  appointed  them  as  inspectors  of  a  certain  district 
and  gave  them  directions  whereby  they  organized. 

About  July  first,  the  League  took  over  from  the  Department 
the  handling  of  all  draft  matters,  the  Department  loaning  to 
the  League  two  special  agents  to  supervise  and  the  League  fur- 
nishing all  the  men  for  the  actual  work. 

We  think  the  strongest  recommendation  we  can  give  of  our 
loyalty  and  interest  is  the  approximate  number  of  cases  handled 
from  April  11,  1918,  to  February  1,  1919,  which  number  amounts 
to  about  5,000,  with  about  4,000  draft  cases  under  the  Selective 
Service  Act. 

On  or  about  October  first,  Mr.  Wolcott  resigned  for  the  pur- 
pose of  taking  up  active  duties  with  the  Army,  and  Mr.  John 
W.  Hannigan  was  appointed  Chief  in  his  place. 

The  relations  of  the  League  with  the  Department  have  been 
of  the  closest,  and  there  has  never  been  any  friction.  Special 
Agent  Kelleher  has  stated  that  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
activities  of  the  League,  it  would  have  been  absolutely  impos- 
sible for  his  office  to  handle  the  great  volume  of  work. 

Once  in  its  swing,  Boston  Division  proceeded  to  do  as 
Boston  always  does,  and  to  work  in  thorough  and  efficient 
fashion.  A  detailed  statement  of  the  work  for  Department 
of  Justice  covers  525  cases  of  alien  enemy  activities,  292 
cases  under  the  Espionage  act,  one  case  of  treason,  seven  of 
sabotage,  eleven  of  interference  with  the  draft,  128  cases  of 
propaganda,  twenty  cases  of  radicals  and  socialists,  seven 
naturalization  cases,  and  other  investigations  amounting 
to  484. 

For  reasons  above  outlined,  the  division  did  little  in  food 
and  fuel,  and  there  was  not  much  to  do  for  the  Navy.  There 
were  seventy-seven  cases  of  character  and  loyalty  investiga- 
tions, 331  passport  cases,  and  262  cases  that  had  to  do  with 
war  insurance  and  like  matters. 

A.  P.  L.  was,  as  usual,  of  great  use  to  the  War  Depart- 
ment. The  division  conducted  514  investigations  for  local 
boards,  examined  4,000  slacker  raid  cases,  as  w^ll  as  fifteen 
gentlemen  who  did  not  know  whether  to  work  or  fight.  There 
were  1,908  applicants  for  overseas  service  who  were  investi- 
gated, as  well  as  510  applicants  for  commissions.  The  divi- 
sion  deserves   compliments   for  its   steady   and  intelligent 


250  THE  WEB 

administration  of  the  whole  range  of  the  complicated  prob- 
lems that  rose  out  of  the  war  situation. 

There  were  all  sorts  of  curious  cases  which  came  up  in 
Boston  as  in  other  cities,  which  show  alien  artlessness  or 
slacker  subterfuges  much  as  they  appear  elsewhere,  as  well 
as  a  certain  occasional  informality  in  regard  to  the  observ- 
ance of  the  ordinary  civil  laws.  For  instance,  one  does  not 
recall  the  name  of  Edward  Burkhart  as  one  of  the  occupants 
of  the  Mayflower  on  its  arrival;  neither  does  Mr.  Burkhart 
seem  to  have  been  fully  possessed  of  Puritan  principles,  for 
it  was  alleged  that  he  had  been  dishonorably  discharged  from 
the  U.  S.  Navy,  was  dishonorably  living  with  a  woman  who 
was  not  his  wife,  and  had  dishonorably  failed  to  register 
for  the  draft.  As  Mr.  Burkhart  was  hiding  out  somewhere, 
an  A.  P.  L.  operative  was  put  on  his  trail.  He  went  to  the 
house  where  Burkhart  was  living  and  told  the  woman  in 
the  case  that  she  was  doing  wrong  in  covering  up  the  where- 
abouts of  Burkhart.  He  added  that  he  believed  the  man  was 
in  the  house  or  would  come  back  to  the  house,  in  spite  of  all 
she  had  said.  That  was  at  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and 
the  operative  concluded  to  sit  in  the  house  and  wait  to  see 
what  would  happen,  all  exits  being  guarded  by  other  opera- 
tives. Nothing  did  happen  until  9:15  that  night,  although 
the  house  was  searched.  At  last,  up  in  the  attic,  a  small 
blind  space  was  found  where  the  electric  light  wires  went  up 
to  the  roof.  A  flash  light  here  illuminated  the  dark  interior 
—  and  disclosed  Mr.  Burkhart  resting  rather  uncomfortably 
on  the  cross  beams,  where  he  had  been  since  early  that  after- 
noon —  something  of  a  Spartan,  if  not  much  of  a  Puritan. 
It  was  found  that  he  was  twenty-five  years  of  age  and  not 
thirty-seven.  It  was  also  found  that  he  had  the  classifica- 
tion card  belonging  to  another  man,  whereupon  he  was  ac- 
cused of  failure  to  file  his  questionnaire.  On  December  30, 
he  was  brought  before  the  Grand  Jury,  found  guilty  and 
sentenced  to  East  Cambridge  jail. 

Another  gentleman,  Mr.  Ralph  E ,  when  he  filled  out 

his  questionnaire,  swore  that  he  was  a  married  man  and  had 
a  wife  and  child  dependent  upon  him.  It  was  discovered 
that  the  woman  was  not  his  wife.  The  man  consulted  the 
partner  of  the  A.  P.  L.  inspector  —  the  two  being  members 
of  the  same  law  firm  —  in  professional  capacity.    Here,  there- 


THE  STORY  OF  BOSTON  251 

fore,  was  a  question  of  ethics  involving  the  privilege  of  a 
confession  made  to  an  attorney  and  also  the  oath  taken  to 

the  A.  P.  L.     The  two  law  partners  called  in  Mr.  E 

and  gave  him  good  advice  about  the  crime  of  perjury.  As 
the  man  did  what  he  could  to  square  up  matters,  it  was 
decided  to  let  that  part  of  his  case  drop.  He  was  not  sent 
to  prison. 

Mr.  Herbert  C had  an  ambition  to  go  across  as  a 

member  of  the  American  Red  Cross  and  had  good  recom- 
mendations. A.  P.  L.,  however,  discovered  that  he  was  an 
alleged  dope  fiend.    He  did  not  go  with  the  Red  Cross. 

Peter  R ,  of  a  town  near  Boston,  while  arguing  with 

two  men  about  the  war,  made  a  few  such  casual  statements 
as  '*  To  hell  with  Liberty  Bonds,"  "  To  hell  with  Thrift 
Stamps, "  "  The  Government  is  no  good, "  '  *  I  will  not  fight 
for  this  country, "  "  I  will  not  register, "  * '  I  am  going  back 
to  my  own  country,  Russia, ' '  and  ' '  The  whole  United  States 
Government  be  damned. ' '  This  man  was  brought  before  the 
Assistant  United  States  District  Attorney  from  the  police 
court,  but  the  attorney  declined  to  prosecute  and  said  that 
Peter  was  only  playful.  He  did  not  think  that  a  private 
trial  could  be  used  in  a  Federal  prosecution.  Most  excel- 
lent !  Obviously,  it  is  the  spirit  that  killeth,  and  the  letter 
that  giveth  life ! 

A  Mr.  C swore  he  had  a  wife  and  child  dependent 

on  him,  and  so  he  ought  not  to  be  asked  to  fight.  A.  P.  L. 
found  out  that  he  had  spent  ten  thousand  dollars  the  year 
before,  that  his  father  gave  him  all  he  wished,  that  he  was  a 
Boston  clubman,  that  he  was  not  engaged  in  any  productive 
industry.  Held  to  the  grand  jury  in  five  thousand  dollars 
bail. 

A  man  by  the  name  of  J was  reported  on  November 

14  to  have  made  disloyal  and  pro-German  remarks.  Two 
days  later,  three  affidavits  were  before  the  Assistant  District 
Attorney.  In  this  case  the  attorney  ruled  that  although  the 
men  had  a  clean  cut  case  against  him,  there  was  no  need 
to  prosecute  him  if  he  had  been  warned.  Indeed,  why 
annoy  an  alien  ? 

Boston  is  well  known  in  the  matter  of  tea  parties.  An 
A.  P.  L.  officer  was  taking  tea  with  a  navy  officer  on  board 
ship  in  Boston  harbor,  and  the  latter  complained  that  his 


252  THE  WEB 

men  were  getting  too  nmcli  cold  tea  on  their  shore  leave. 
A.  P.  L.  took  it  up  with  the  Naval  Intelligence,  and  within 
a  week  a  man  was  taken  in  custody  for  selling  such  beverages 
to  men  in  uniform. 

Mr.  Charles  D.  Milkowicz,  or  some  such  name,  was  alleged 
to  dance  in  happiness  at  the  report  of  any  German  victory. 
It  was  his  custom  to  fire  any  employe  in  the  factory  where 
he  was  foreman,  if  the  employe  showed  any  pro- American 
tendencies.  Once  he  said  regarding  the  U.  S.  flag,  *'  Get 
that  damned  flag  out  of  the  way. ' '  He  used  to  wear  an  iron 
cross  stick  pin  up  to  April  6,  1917.  He  w^as  a  member  of 
the  German  Club,  and  used  to  buy  silver  nails  for  the  Hin- 
denburg  statue  which  they  maintained  at  that  club,  such 
nails  retailing  for  a  dollar  a  throw,  all  for  the  good  of  the 
Kaiser.  A.  P.  L.  started  an  investigation  which  showed  that 
this  man  seemed  to  be  uncertain  whether  he  came  from 
Russia  or  Germany  and  was  equally  indefinite  as  to  his  age. 
He  was  not  registered  as  an  alien  enemy,  and  was  charged 
with  falsifying  his  questionnaire  as  well  as  violating  Section 
3  of  the  Espionage  Act.  The  Assistant  U.  S.  Attorney  han- 
dling alien  enemy  matters  in  Massachusetts  refused  to  act 
in  this  case.  So  far  as  known,  the  attorney  is  still  in  office, 
and  Mr.  Milkowicz  is  still  in  Boston. 

Mr.  Hans  D ,  a  German  waiter  in  Boston,  belonged 

to  a  German  club  where  considerable  advance  news  of  Ger- 
man operations  circulated.    I\Ir.  D said  he  sent  money 

to  Germany;  said  that  Germany  would  win  the  war;  drank 
to  the  health  of  the  Kaiser  on  hearing  that  an  American  ship 

had  been  torpedoed.     In  short,  Mr.  D ran  quite  true 

to  form  in  all  waj^s.  A  photograph  was  found  which  looked 
like  him  in  a  German  uniform  —  he  must  have  been  a  German 
officer,  because  they  found  in  his  possession  a  half  dozen 
spoons  which  he  had  stolen  in  New  England,  in  default  of 
better  opportunity  in  Belgium.  At  least  he  was  prosecuted 
for  larceny  and  was  fined  $15.00.  Later  his  reputation  was 
found  to  be  so  bad  as  a  propagandist  that  he  was  interned 
on  a  presidential  warrant. 

It  occurred  to  the  fertile  brain  of  Mr.  Julius  Bongraber 
that  a  varied  spelling  of  his  name  might  prove  useful  to  him 
in  times  of  draft.  Sometimes  he  wrote  his  name  as  Graber, 
sometimes  as  Van  Graber,  and  sometimes  as  Julius  V.  Gaber. 


THF.  STORY  OF  BOSTON  253 

His  classification  card  named  him  as  G.  V.  Gaber.  When 
interrogated  as  to  all  these  matters,  he  admitted  that  the 
fnitial  '  ^  G  "  ought  to  have  been  "  Y, "  because  that  was  the 
way  Yulius  was  pronounced,  anyhow,  in  his  country.  At 
the  same  time  he  left  a  card  over  his  door  signed  J.  V.  Gaber. 
He  declared  that  he  was  a  German,  also  an  Austrian,  also  a 
neutral,  but  had  sympathies  with  Russia.  To  others  he  said 
that  his  name  was  Von  Gaber;  that  he  was  an  alien,  but 
would  go  where  he  liked.  He  had  taken  out  first  citizenship 
papers,  but  had  registered  for  return  with  the  Austria- 
Hungarian  Consul.  xV.  P.  L.  got  this  multifold  party  on 
the  carpet,  but  on  his  statement  that  he  intended  to  go  to 
New  York,  the  prosecution  seems  to  have  been  dropped, 
although  the  dossier  was  forwarded  to  New  York  after  him. 
•  There  was   a   draft   evader  in   Boston  by  the  name  of 

E ,  who  did  not  file  his  questionnaire.    He  was  found 

at  his  home  by  an  agent  of  A.  P.  L.  and  agreed  to  accompany 
the  latter.  It  was  the  intention  of  the  operative  to  turn  over 
his  man  to  a  policeman,  but  policemen  seemed  to  be  rare  in 
Boston,  for  in  two  miles  not  one  was  sighted.  The  draft 
evader  then  evaded  yet  more,  and  was  not  found  for  several 
days  thereafter.  The  man's  mother,  however,  when  found, 
averred  she  had  not  seen  her  son  for  two  months.  A  plain 
patriotic  talk  was  made  to  her  with  the  result  that  after  a 
^vhile,  she  found  the  said  son  and  turned  him  over  to  the 
authorities  for  service  in  the  army. 

Boston  Division  in  one  case  revoked  the  credentials  which 
it  had  issued  to  an  operative.     The  man's  name  was  Oscar 

F ,  and  the  position  seemed  to  go  to  his  head.    He  took 

to  borrowing  money  right  and  left,  once  getting  as  high  as 
fifty  dollars  on  a  touch  of  one  of  the  special  agents.  He 
admitted  that  he  was  probably  the  best  secret  service  agent 
in  the  countrv',  and  told  people  he  was  getting  $3,000  a  year 
and  expenses.  After  that  he  usually  touched  his  listener  for 
$5.00.  Oscar  was  doing  well  until  they  let  him  out.  His 
name  ended  in  *'  ski." 

Boston,  being  near  the  Northern  seaboard,  heard  of  a  good 
many  cases  of  mysterious  light  signals.  One  operative  in  the 
Lynn  district  was  sure  he  had  seen  dots  and  dashes  coming 
across  the  bay  at  night  in  the  approved  fashion  of  mysterious 
night  signals.     They  put  a  telegrapher  on  the  case  but  he 


254  THE  WEB 

could  not  make  out  the  message.  At  one  o  'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing four  tried  men  and  true  of  the  A.  P.  L.  rowed  out  with 
muffled  oars  to  an  anchored  yacht  which  seemed  to  be  the 
place  from  which  the  light  signals  appeared.  They  found 
five  pairs  of  feet  pointing  to  the  zenith.  Calling  upon  the 
feet  to  surrender,  they  boarded  the  yacht  and  explanations 
followed.  It  appeared  that  the  five  yachtsmen  had  had  a 
hard  day's  sail  and  had  decided  to  remain  on  board  ship 
over  night.  The  flashes  of  light  which  had  so  aroused  the 
A.  P.  L.  men  were  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  reflection 
of  a  shore  light  on  the  glass  of  a  porthole  as  the  boat  rolled 
and  swayed  in  the  ripples  of  the  bay. 

Next  to  mysterious  signal  lights,  wireless  stations  have  pro- 
duced as  many  flivvers  for  the  A.  P.  L.  as  anything  else. 
Inspector  T insisted  that  there  was  a  house  in  his  dis- 
trict which  ought  to  be  searched,  because  he  was  satisfied  it 
had  a  wireless  plant.  As  he  had  no  proof,  he  could  not  obtain 
a  search  warrant.  Mr.  Endicott,  at  the  office  of  the  Food 
Administration,  gave  him  a  sugar  warrant,  stating  that  that 
would  let  him  into  the  house,  and  that  he  might  get  some 

information.     Inspector  T went  to  the  house  with  a 

club  in  one  hand  and  the  warrant  in  the  other ;  searched  the 
house  from  garret  to  basement,  but  found  no  wireless.  While 
poking  around  in  one  of  the  corners,  however,  he  did  dis- 
cover eighty  pounds  of  sugar,  which,  being  overweight,  he 
promptly  confiscated. 

Soon  after  the  forming  of  the  A.  P.  L.  in  Boston,  a  man 
came  in  with  a  carrier  pigeon  which  he  was  sure  was  a 
mysterious  messenger  of  some  sort.  It  was  a  beautiful  white 
bird  that  had  dark  dots  and  dashes  all  over  the  inside  of 
both  wings.  The  chief  was  all  wrought  up  about  this  and 
regretted  that  he  had  not  been  taught  the  Morse  code  in  early 
life.  He  therefore  took  the  man  and  the  bird  over  to  the 
office  of  Military  Intelligence,  where  they  unravel,  decipher 
and  decode  all  sorts  of  things.  The  Major  in  command  was 
very  cordial,  and  he  also  examined  the  bird  carefully.  In 
his  belief  the  dots  and  dashes  on  the  wings  were  of  impor- 
tance, but  he  could  not  quite  read  them  all.  He  sent  for 
the  code  expert  of  the  Signal  Corps.  Who  shall  say  that 
A.  P.  L.  cannot  run  down  any  sort  of  clew  1  The  code  expert 
of  the  Signal  Corps  also  examined  the  bird  carefully,  but 


THE  STORY  OF  BOSTON  255 

at  first  could  not  make  it  out.  Then  he  touched  one  of  the 
dots  with  the  point  of  his  pencil.  It  turned  out  to  be  a  per- 
fectly good  cootie,  which  still  possessed  powers  of  locomotion. 
Throughout  the  war,  New  England  was,  always,  one  of 
the  nerA^e  centers  of  the  United  States.  A  great  many  muni- 
tion factories  were  at  work  there  day  and  night.  The  atmos- 
phere was  tense  all  the  time ;  war  was  in  the  eyes  and  ears  of 
the  people.  But  let  no  man  believe  New  England  anything 
but  American.  Whatever  her  population  to-day,  her  leader- 
ship is  American  and  only  American  and  always  will  be 
such.  Boston  and  her  environs,  the  entire  state  of  Massa- 
chusetts, the  entire  section  of  New  England,  went  into  the 
war  from  the  first  word.  No  part  of  America  is  saner  or 
safer ;  no  part  was  better  guided  and  guarded  by  local  agen- 
cies of  defense.  A.  P.  L.  was  accepted  as  one  of  these, 
certainly  not  to  the  regret  of  any  man  concerned. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  STORY  OF  CLEVELAND 

Astonishing  Figures  of  A.  P.  L.  Activities  in  a  Great  Manu- 
facturing City  —  Sabotage,  Bolshevism  and  Treason  —  I. 
W.  W.  and  Kindred  Radical  Propaganda  —  The  Saving  of 
a  City. 

Once  more  we  find  occasion  to  revise  the  popular  estimate 
of  a  supposedly  well-known  American  community.  No  one 
would  think  of  staid,  steady,  even-going  Cleveland  as  any- 
thing but  a  place  of  prosperity  and  peace.  At  a  rough  esti- 
mate, before  the  Cleveland  report  came  in,  one  would  have 
said  that  possibly  that  city  might  report  a  total  of  ten  or 
fifteen  thousand  cases  of  A.  P.  L.  investigations.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  Cleveland  total  is  over  sixty  thousand !  And 
yet,  the  Cleveland  Chief  in  his  report  calls  attention  to  the 
large  amount  of  war  supplies  manufactured  in  his  district, 
and  says:  **  We  were  a  hot-bed  of  Socialism  and  pro- 
Germanism,  but  not  one  dollar's  worth  of  material  was 
lost." 

Cleveland  Division  was  organized  in  May,  1917,  with  a 
personnel  of  1,008  —  Mr.  Arch  C.  Klunph,  Chief,  six  As- 
sistant Chiefs,  seven  Departmental  Inspectors,  an  office  staff 
and  eighteen  companies.  There  were  also  one  women's  com- 
pany and  about  five  hundred  unattached  operatives ;  a  total 
personnel  of  1,551. 

As  the  type  of  A.  P.  L.  service  varied  in  different  cities, 
it  may  be  interesting  to  other  cities  to  note  the  character  of 
work  the  Cleveland  division  was  called  upon  to  do.  The  list 
of  investigations  covei-s  many  heads:  Failure  to  register, 
failure  to  entrain,  and  deserters  from  service,  5,356 ;  failure 
to  submit  questionnaire,  2,100 ;  failure  to  report  for  physical 
examination,  3,100;  claims  for  exemption,  2,500;  seditious 
literature,  50;  seditious  and  treasonable  utterances  or  pro- 
German  cases,  7,113 ;  loyalty  investigations  for  Army,  Navy, 

256 


THE  STORY  OF  CLEVELAND  257 

Eed  Cross,  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  etc.,  1,746 ;  wireless  outfits,  40;  enemy- 
agents  or  spies,  363;  I.  W.  W.,  Socialist,  W.  I.  I.  U.  and 
Bolsheviki,  1,529;  industrial  sabotage,  318;  Liberty  Bond 
slackers,  500.  Total  number  of  men  apprehended  and  ex- 
amined on  slacker  raids,  estimated,  36,000.    Total  —  60,715. 

In  addition  to  the  foregoing,  the  Cleveland  division  has 
rendered  a  large  amount  of  service  in  investigating  cases  of 
violations  of  food,  fuel,  electric  light  and  gasless  Sunday 
regulations ;  cases  for  the  National  Council  of  Defense ;  regis- 
tration of  male  and  female  enemy  aliens  (approximately 
5,000)  ;  work  of  U.  S.  JMarshal's  office;  work  of  Naturaliza- 
tion Bureau  by  secret  investigations  of  applicants  for  citi- 
zenship ;  Red  Cross  overseas  work ;  Socialist  cases ;  details  for 
War  Work  plants.  There  also  were  regular  weekly  details 
of  volunteer  workers  with  automobiles  to  assist  the  Police 
Department. 

As  to  definite  preventive  measures,  the  Chief  points  out 
several  instances :  the  stopping  of  manufacture  of  a  fountain 
pen  which  would  explode  on  being  opened;  the  choking  off 
of  the  establishment  of  a  high-power  wireless  plant  on  the 
shore  of  Lake  Erie ;  the  discharge  of  countless  German  work- 
men in  factories  producing  food  for  the  Army ;  the  confisca- 
tion of  models  and  plans  of  American  battleships  and  sub- 
marines, and  literature  found  in  the  hands  of  German 
propagandists. 

In  May,  1918,  an  express  company  notified  Cleveland 
A.  P.  L.  that  they  were  called  upon  to  issue  money  orders 
to  an  unusual  number  of  Germans,  who  claimed  that  they 
were  returning  to  their  homes  in  Russia.  The  League  cap- 
tured twenty-three  men,  all  claiming  to  live  in  Russia,  al- 
though plainly  German  in  appearance,  and  speaking  that 
language  in  talking  with  one  another.  Three  men  left  for 
Chicago,  but  were  apprehended  by  ware  at  the  railroad  ter- 
minal in  Chicago.  This  was  a  concerted  movement  to  get 
as  many  Germans  as  possible  back  into  Russia. 

Cleveland,  being  one  of  the  largest  cities  of  the  United 
States,  and  having  also  one  of  the  largest  percentages  of 
foreign  population,  naturally  indeed  was  a  hot-bed  for  So- 
cialism, I.  W.  W.  work  and  Bolshevism,  although  such  had 
not  been  the  general  reputation  of  the  city.  These  organ- 
izations held  regular  meetings,  often  with  speeches  of  the 


258  THE  WEB 

most  dangerous  character.  At  most  of  them,  there  was  an 
A.  P.  L.  operative  noting  all  that  was  done  and  said. 

Cleveland  Division  covered  a  population  of  over  a  million, 
and  that  in  one  of  the  four  largest  war  working  centers  in 
the  nation.  It  is  a  very  proud  claim  to  say  that  not  one 
dollar  was  lost  to  the  nation.  The  Chief  points  out  that  this 
statement  is  the  more  astonishing  because  there  were  made 
in  Cleveland  a  long  list  of  military  supplies:  Air-planes, 
wings  and  parts ;  ammunitions,  clothing,  trucks,  and  the  hun- 
dred other  materials  for  use  in  the  Army  and  Navy.  There 
were  three  hundred  and  eighty-six  plants  in  Cuyhoga  County 
engaged  in  ordnance  work,  and  there  were  employed  in 
these  plants  1,218  workmen.  These  ordnance  plants  had  con- 
tracts amounting  to  $175,000,000.  Motor  transportation 
plants,  making  trucks,  trailers,  axles,  forms,  etc.,  had  a  series 
of  contracts  totaling  $88,000,000.  There  were  fifty  plants 
engaged  in  air-craft  production,  and  twenty  making  clothing, 
not  to  mention  three  large  shipyards,  all  busy  practically 
day  and  night.  That  means  work!  Figures  like  this  are 
serious.  It  is  no  cheap  flattery  to  say  to  the  men  who  are 
responsible  for  the  safety  of  these  vast  industrial  concerns 
that  their  record  is  a  more  than  marvelous  one.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  there  is  the  best  of  feeling  between  Cleveland 
Division  and  the  Department  of  Justice,  Police  Department 
and  all  the  allied  administrations  of  the  law.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  print  the  letters  of  appreciation  from  any  of  these. 

The  Chief  says  that  the  most  of  the  active  work  covered 
a  period  of  about  fifteen  months.  The  cases  handled  monthly 
approximated  four  thousand.  Obviously  it  is  impossible  to 
report  sixty  thousand,  or  four  thousand,  or  one  thousand 
cases,  but  some  of  the  Cleveland  specials  are  too  interesting 
to  leave  aside.  It  is  regrettable  that  they  must  be  abbre- 
viated. 

On  December  1,  1917,  Dorothy  A ,  a  nice  Cleveland 

girl,  was  selling  Liberty  Bonds  for  the  Y.  W,  C.  A.  on  a 
partial  payment  basis,  which  did  not  seem  quite  right.  Doro- 
thy was  hard  to  find,  but  she  admitted,  when  found,  that 
she  was  selling  these  bonds  because  she  needed  the  money 
herself.  The  mortgage  on  the  old  home  was  about  to  be  fore- 
closed, and  she  had  taken  this  method  of  getting  what  money 
she  could.    It  was  in  truth  the  case  of  a  young  girl  driven 


THE  STORY  OF  CLEVELAND  259 

desperate  by  circumstances.  The  A.  P.  L.  first  got  her  a 
good  position;  second,  advanced  the  money  to  pay  off  the 
mortgage  on  the  home,  she  to  pay  them  back  in  monthly 
installments;  and  third,  found  the  people  to  whom  she  had 
sold  the  bonds,  and  returned  the  money  of  which  she  had 
fraudulently  deprived  them.  This  girl  remained  clean  and 
straight,  and  as  a  culmination  of  the  case  she  married  a 
young  soldier,  whom  she  met  through  the  A.  P.  L.,  who 
later  did  his  bit  in  France.  We  do  not  know  of  a  prettier  bit 
in  the  history  of  the  A.  P.  L.  than  this. 

On  March  2,  1918,  A.  P.  L.  ran  down  another  one  of  those 
cruel  rumors  against  the  Red  Cross  which  have  been  started 
by  pro-German  women  for  the  most  part.  This  rumor  was 
first  circulated  by  a  young  woman,  and  is  of  a  nature  which 
can  not  be  put  into  print.  The  girl,  when  found,  confessed 
that  she  was  guilty.  She  also  confessed  that  she  was  hitting 
the  high  spots  in  the  city,  having  left  a  country  home  to  get 
acquainted  with  the  bright  lights.  The  A.  P.  L.  did  not  kick 
this  woman  down  and  out,  either,  but  gave  her  a  hand-up. 
Two  weeks  later  she  came  to  the  Division  Office  with  tears 
in  her  eyes,  apologized  for  the  false  rumors  which  she  had 
set  going,  and  implored  that  she  might  be  allowed  to  do 
something  for  the  office  of  the  division. 

A  war  plant  making  areoplane  parts  kept  turning  out 
defective  work.  The  A.  P.  L.  put  a  woman  operative  in  the 
factory.  She  chanced  to  be  a  young  woman  of  a  wealthy 
family,  accustomed  to  the  luxury  of  a  beautiful  home,  but 
she  took  to  the  overalls  and  dirty  work  as  a  duck  does  to 
water.  She  was  in  the  factory  three  weeks,  located  the 
trouble,  and  it  was  adjusted. 

A  telephone  call  reported  that  a  house  was  being  burglar- 
ized. An  A.  P.  L.  man  at  the  phone  remembered  that  a 
deserter  had  been  sought  for  at  that  number.  In  thirty 
minutes  the  house  was  surrounded.  They  did  not  catch  the 
deserter,  but  they  did  get  the  burglar. 

A  dangerous  type  of  service  was  the  raiding  of  I.  W.  W. 
headquarters.  Sometimes  these  were  boarding  houses  where 
thirty  or  forty  of  these  people  would  be  gathered  together. 
When  such  a  place  was  surrounded,  the  suspects  would  pour 
out  of  the  windows  into  the  arms  of  the  operatives.  This 
meant  occasional  fights,  and  there  was  danger  in  the  work. 


260  THE  WEB 

but  there  was  no  case  where  loss  of  life  was  experienced. 

An  interesting  fact  of  Cleveland  war  work  was  that  de- 
veloped by  examination  of  the  draughting  rooms  in  the  large 
plants.  In  some  of  these  plants  the  entire  draughting  force 
was  not  only  German  by  descent  but  pro-German  in  senti- 
ment. It  has  often  been  said  that  part  of  German  propa- 
ganda was  to  get  men  in  factories  where  they  could  get  blue- 
prints of  all  of  our  machinery.  In  November,  1917,  the 
League  was  advised  that  a  draughtsman  of  a  ship-building 
company  was  very  pro-German,  and  it  was  said  that  the 
foreman  in  charge  would  hire  only  Germans.  Constant 
surveillance  was  ordered,  but  it  was  as  late  as  June,  1918, 
before  this  man  was  found  making  derogatory  remarks  about 
our  Army.  He  was  found  to  have  been  an  officer  in  the 
German  Reserves.  He  was  jailed.  Many  letters  were  found 
on  him  sufficient  to  warrant  his  internment. 

As  though  I.  W.  W.'s  were  not  sufficiently  dangerous, 
operatives  were  once  asked  to  arrest  a  colored  slacker  who 
worked  for  a  lion-tamer.  The  latter,  a  woman,  gave  the 
operatives  a  tip  that  her  assistant  ought  to  be  looked  into. 
He  was  finally  caught  at  the  time  when  he  was  transferring 
the  lions  from  the  performing  ring  to  their  traveling  cages, 
but  that  did  not  stop  the  operatives.  After  he  got  the  doors 
locked  he  was  taken  to  the  Federal  Building  and  inducted 
into  the  Service,  where  his  courage  will  be  put  to  good 
service. 

Here  are  some  familiar  pro-German  statements,  this  time 
uttered  by  one  A.  C ,  who  was  running  an  adver- 
tising agency.  At  one  time  he  said  that  ''  the  war  would  be 
ended  by  January  1,  because  German  training  was  better 
than  ours  —  that  we  should  not  believe  the  lies  about  Ger- 
mans killing  babies  —  everyone  knows  that  America  is  going 
to  lose  the  war  —  that  this  is  no  war  for  Democracy  —  that 
there  is  no  Democracy  in  America. ' '  Indicted.  Guilty.  In- 
terned.   A.  P.  L. 

Cleveland  had  its  own  troubles  with  evaders  and  slackers, 
and  it  took  many  cleverly  laid  plans  to  catch  some  of  them. 
These  are  some  of  the  methods.  After  locating  where  a  sus- 
pect lived  who  was  hard  to  find,  a  man  would  appear  next 
day  as  one  of  the  solicitors  of  the  City  Directory  whose 
business  it  was  to  get  the  name  of  every  man  in  each  house. 


THE  STORY  OF  CLEVELAND  261 

The  solicitor  was  usually  a  very  old  looking  man.  This 
usually  worked.  If  it  did  not,  a  messenger  boy  would  show 
up  with  a  message  saying  that  it  must  be  delivered  at  once. 
If  this  failed,  there  would  come  a  letter  from  some  prominent 
institution,  sent  in  an  unsealed  envelope,  addressed  to  the 
man  offering  him  a  job  at  an  unusually  high  wage.  One 
or  the  other  of  these  devices  would  usually  establish  touch 
with  the  man  wanted.    It  Avas  like  changing  baits  in  a  trap. 

An  interesting  case  was  that  of  Harry  W ,  who  w^as 

brother  of  another  ]Mr.  W sentenced  to  the  workhouse 

for  violation  of  the  Espionage  Act.  Harry  did  not  register, 
but  was  picked  up  in  the  City  Council  Chamber.  He  des- 
perately tried  to  convince  the  A.  P.  L.  men  that  he  was  too 
old,  but  the  operatives  got  liis  birth  record  and  proved  that 
he  had  wilfully  evaded  registration.  Indicted  and  sentenced 
to  one  year  in  the  workhouse. 

A  deserter  from  Camp  Sherman,  in  December,  1917,  was 
located  wearing  civilian  clothes  as  late  as  September,  1918. 
He  was  hidden  by  a  certain  woman,  who  had  secreted  his 
uniform  and  who  had  supplied  him  with  liquor  repeatedly. 
We  learned  that  this  was  an  illicit  relation.  The  woman  had 
furnished  the  man  with  money  from  time  to  time.  The 
A.  P.  L.  took  her  case  up  with  the  District  Attorney.  The 
woman  is  awaiting  indictment  of  a  charge  of  furnishing 
liquor  to  a  soldier  and  harboring  a  deserter.  Her  lover  is 
back  in  camp. 

The  division  had  a  good  case  on  certain  German  sympa- 
thizers believed  to  be  sending  certain  information  to  the 
enemy.  A  dictaphone  was  installed  in  a  hotel  room  which 
they  occupied,  and  the  place  was  watched  day  and  night  for 
a  week.  Just  at  the  time  when  it  seemed  that  some  informa- 
tion was  going  to  be  reported,  a  parrot  which  the  people  had 
in  the  room  started  to  chatter  and  beat  them  into  the  dicta- 
phone. Nothing  was  discovered  at  that  time  and  the  Chief 
reports,  ' '  I  regret  we  cannot  print  what  came  over  the  dicta- 
phone by  the  parrot." 

Adolph  E ,  a  German  of  the  Germans,  was  within 

the  draft,  but  resisted  in  every  possible  way,  and  said  he 
would  kill  any  members  of  the  League  who  came  after  him. 
He  even  called  up  individual  members  and  told  them  he  was 
going  to  shoot  them.  When  an  order  came  he  told  the  A.  P.  L. 


262  THE  WEB 

man  that  he  would  pay  no  attention.  A  detail  was  sent 
after  him  and  he  was  escorted  like  a  little  lamb  to  the  bar- 
racks.    He  has  been  a  good  German  ever  since. 

The  League  found  that  it  had  in  its  ranks  as  an  operative 
a  resident  of  the  city  of  Cleveland,  who  had  been  there  all 
his  life  but  was  a  German  alien  and  not  registered.  This 
fellow  was  arrested  and  interned  for  a  short  period,  though 
soon  paroled. 

The  Cleveland  division  of  A.  P.  L.  took  a  very  prominent 
part  in  the  Debs  cas,e,  and  furnished  abundant  men  and 
machines  on  the  Sunday  that  Debs  was  arrested  in  Cleveland. 
It  also  helped  to  assemble  the  evidence  on  which  Debs  was 
indicted. 

Washington  was  on  the  hunt  for  a  dangerous  enemy  alien 

by  the  name  of  Henry  H .     Information  came  that 

he  was  working  for  a  photographic  concern  in  Cleveland,  but 
he  could  not  be  located.  Four  months  later  a  complaint  of 
pro-Germanism  came  in  against  a  man  of  the  same  name 
working  for  a  city  directory  company.  He  had  changed  his 
occupation  but  not  his  nature,  and  hence  was  arrested. 

The  printed  page  was  another  form  of  propaganda  in 
Cleveland.  An  alien  enemy  editor  of  a  German  paper  was 
allowed  at  large  with  restrictions.  He  abused  his  privilege 
and  was  interned  at  Fort  Oglethorpe.  Indictments  and  con- 
victions were  found  against  members  of  the  staff  of  a  German 
daily.  Yet  another  editor  refused  to  print  articles  on  food 
conservation,  and  he  also  was  indicted  and  convicted. 
Sabotage  was  threatened  and  planned  in  many  cases.  In 
one  instance  a  tip  got  out  that  a  big  war  plant  was  to  be 
blown  up  on  one  of  two  given  nights.  The  League  got  on 
the  job  and  found  the  plant  to  be  insufficiently  guarded. 
The  guard  was  increased  and  no  damage  was  done. 

Gottlieb  K ,  an  alien  enemy,  was  caught  out  of  his 

zone  without  his  permit.  Operatives  went  to  his  home  and 
found  two  Mauser  rifles,  a  peck  of  shells,  a  dagger,  a  black- 
jack and  several  maps  of  Canada,  the  United  States  and 
Mexico.  Gottlieb  was  thought  to  be  more  fit  for  Fort  Ogle- 
thorpe than  Cleveland. 

Mr.  A.  L.  H ,  a  member  of  the  Cleveland  Board  of 

Education,  had  his  own  idea  about  education.  In  the  home 
of  a  socialist  he  remarked  that  the  Liberty  Bonds  would 


THE  STORY  OF  CLEVELAND  263 

never  be  paid,  and  that  the  working  class  for  generations 
would  have  to  work  to  support  these  bonds.  He  stated  that 
the  Russian  Committee,  headed  by  Elihu  Root,  who  went  to 
Russia  to  investigate  the  conditions  there,  had  their  report 
written  and  signed  before  they  left  America.  He  frequently 
said  that  the  bonds  of  the  United  States  were  not  worth  the 
paper  they  were  written  on.  Affidavits  resulted  in  the  indict- 
ment of  i\Ir.  H ,  and  he  was  sentenced  to  ten  years  in 

the  Atlanta  Penitentiary,  the  conviction  automatically  re- 
moving him  from  the  Board  of  Education. 

A  mail  carrier  in  Cleveland  fell  heir  to  $60,000,  but  being 
a  socialist,  would  not  subscribe  to  Liberty  Bonds.  He  was 
called  to  the  headquarters  of  the  A.  P.  L.  and  reasoned  with. 
The  next  day  his  son  came  into  headquarters  literally  run- 
ning over  with  Liberty  Bonds.  He  had  $10,000  worth,  all  in 
$100  denominations !    They  sent  him  home  with  a  guard. 

The  A.  P.  L.  was  responsible  for  obtaining  the  evidence 
that  secured  the  conviction  of  the  State  Secretary  of  the 
Socialist  Party  and  two  others.  All  of  these  men  publicly 
made  speeches  against  the  draft,  and  were  actually  instru- 
mental in  preventing  certain  men  from  complying  with  the 
Selective  Service  Act.  All  sentenced  to  one  year  of  peace  in 
the  Canton  workhouse  by  the  Federal  Court. 

A  gentleman  by  the  name  of  Joseph  Freiheit  —  Freiheit 
means  *'  freedom  "  in  German  —  said  that  if  sent  to  the 
army  he  would  not  shoot  at  the  Germans.  He  advised  his 
friends  to  do  the  same.  He  was  brought  to  headquarters  and 
reprimanded.  The  next  day  he  committed  suicide.  Case 
closed. 

A  man  who  owned  a  garage  was  reported  hostile  to  Liberty 
Bonds  and  Thrift  Stamps.  A  certain  operative  went  to  talk 
over  with  him  the  question  of  Thrift  Stamps.  The  question 
was  asked,  "  How  many  do  you  want  me  to  buy?  ''  The 
solicitor  said  he  thought  about  a  thousand  dollars  worth.  He 
bought  a  thousand  dollars  worth  in  cash,  then  and  there. 
Almost  persuaded. 

A  very  elusive  draft  dodger  was  Geo.  F ,  who  was 

chased  from  pillar  to  post,  but  not  come  up  with.  He  was 
discovered   to   have    an    intrigue   with    a   waitress,   Jennie 

M ,  who  also  would  change  her  name  once  in  a  while, 

leave  her  place  of  employment  and  be  gone  a  day  or  two. 


264  THE  WEB 

The  question  was,  where  did  she  go  ?  The  operatives  on  the 
case  took  Jennie  down  to  the  Federal  Building,  where  she 
told  so  many  conflicting  stories  that  she  was  locked  up. 
Meantime,  the  Post  Office  Department  advised  that  certain 
letters  were  sent  back  from  Elyria,  Ohio,  addressed  to  "  F. 

J.  P . "    The  return  card  brought  the  trail  around  to 

one  of  the  original  dwelling-places  of  the  suspect.  The 
operative  now  went  to  this  address  and  found  the  owner 
of  the  home  and  threatened  to  arrest  him  for  abetting  a 
deserter  from  the  United  States  Army.  These  letters  were 
opened  and  it  was  discovered  that  the  man  desired  was  get- 
ting mail  at  the  post  office  at  Monroe,  Michigan.  So  the 
operative  went  to  Jennie  in  jail  and  said,  "  Well,  we  have 
got  George  over  in  Michigan,"  ''  Is  that  so?  "  said  the  girl ; 
*'  how  did  you  get  him?  "  The  operative  declined  to  tell, 
and  said  the  only  thing  he  wondered  about  was  what  name 
George  was  going  under  in  Monroe.  The  girl  finally  admit- 
ted that  his  name  there  was  "  F.  J.  P ."     It  took 

patience  and  shrewdness  to  follow  the  trail  in  Monroe.  How- 
ever, a  name  was  found  written  in  two  places  in  a  register 
of  a  workingmen's  hotel  there.     The  initials  were  the  same 

as  for  F.  J.  P ,  one  of  the  many  alias  names.     The 

landlady  was  found,  and  a  picture  of  Jennie  was  shown  her. 

She  said  it  was  the  same  picture  that  "  F.  J.  P "  had 

in  the  back  of  his  watch.  The  rest  was  rather  simple.  The 
operator  hired  a  taxicab  and  started  out  in  search  of  his  man, 
who  then  was  engaged  as  night  watchman  on  some  road 
work.  A  steam  roller  was  found  in  the  middle  of  the  road, 
displaying  a  red  lantern,  wdth  a  man  fast  asleep  on  top.  The 
operative  awakened  him,  and  identified  him  as  the  much 

wanted  Geo.  F ,  alias  Ed.  D ,  alias  Geo.  W , 

alias  F.  J.  P ,  alias  F.  J.  P .     The  man  was 

handcuffed  and  the  party  started  back  for  Monroe.  In  due 
time,  the  suspect  was  taken  to  the  Department  of  Justice, 
and  on  December  14  the  long  trail  ended  for  him.  The 
details  of  this  pursuit  are  among  the  most  interesting  of  those 
which  have  been  turned  in  for  any  case  on  the  Cleveland 
records. 

One  operative  had  what  he  took  to  be  a  regular  Conan 
Doyle  novel,  all  spread  out  before  him.  It  involved  what 
was  known  as  * '  The  House  of  Mystery, ' '  where  all  kinds  of 


THE  STORY  OF  CLEVELAND  265 

mysterious  goings  and  comings  and  every  sort  of  dark,  secret 
midnight  interview  took  place.  After  a  long,  long  time  the 
house  of  mystery  was  closed.  The  inspector  was  able  from 
other  information  to  tell  the  operatives  what  was  the  matter 
with  his  case  —  which  is  not  reported  in  full.  The  inspector 
said :  '  *  Your  elderly  woman  there  is  the  mother  of  the 
younger  woman,  who  is  married  to  a  worthless  scamp,  from 
whom  she  is  seeking  a  divorce.  They  have  a  beautiful  home 
in  the  mountains  of  the  West,  and  that  is  where  they  go 
on  the  mysterious  trips  you  have  been  noticing  so  long. 
Their  trunks  are  filled  with  valuable  papers,  and  when  they 
finished  discussing  these,  they  put  them  back  in  the  trunks. 
The  little  child  is  the  son  of  the  young  woman.  The  reason 
they  rented  this  isolated  house  and  made  a  prisoner  out  of 
the  child  was  because  the  father  has  been  tTying  to  kidnap 
the  child.  The  mysterious  chauffeur  is  the  secretary  of  the 
ladies.  When  he  enlisted  for  the  war  they  found  cause  to 
weep  on  that  account."  The  operative  had  been  working 
on  an  ordinary  society  detective  story  instead  of  a  plot 
against  the  United  States, 

Perhaps  these  very  few  random  cases  may  serve  to  show 
the  variety  of  the  sixty  thousand  handled  in  Cleveland.  What 
did  it  all  mean  for  the  safety  and  security  of  the  United 
States?  Who  can  measure  it?  That  is  a  thing  impossible. 
But  that  the  good  citizens  of  Cleveland  appreciated  what 
the  A.  P.  L.  has  done  may  be  seen  from  abundant  local 
evidence.  Under  date  of  December  24  the  Cleveland  news- 
papers came  out  in  open  condemnation  of  the  wave  of  crime 
then  threatening  the  city.  The  Plain  Dealer  said  very 
plainly : 

The  amazing  boldness  of  bandits,  burglars  and  miscellaneous 
plug-uglies  in  Cleveland  has  finally  stirred  the  city  to  an  in- 
sistent demand  that  something  approaching  war  methods  be 
adopted  in  dealing  with  them.  It  is  peculiarly  irritating  to 
know  that  most,  if  not  all,  of  the  criminals  are  young  men  of 
military  age.  While  better  men  have  been  giving  their  lives 
to  free  the  world  of  the  terror  of  Germanism,  these  stealthy 
enemies  have  been  staging  a  reign  of  terror  of  their  own  in  a 
modern  American  community.  The  American  Protective 
League  has  wisely  placed  its  services  at  the  disposal  of  the 
police.     All  public  spirited  citizens  should  cooperate  in  every 


266  THE  WEB 

possible  way.  The  police  are  shooting  to  kill,  and  the  more 
frequently  their  aim  proves  true  the  better  it  will  be  for 
Cleveland.  It  is  not  time  for  leniency  or  compromise.  The 
thug  of  to-day,  who  has  so  serious  a  misapprehension  of  the 
privilege  of  being  an  American,  deserves  nothing  beyond  a 
snug  grave.  There  have  been  other  epidemics  of  outlawry  in 
Cleveland,  and  perhaps  the  present  "crime  wave"  is  no  more 
menacing  than  some  that  have  gone  before.  But  coming  just 
at  this  time,  when  so  great  a  price  has  been  paid  to  make 
America  and  all  the  world  safe  and  decent,  the  impudence  of 
the  gunman  is  peculiarly  infuriating. 

The  Cleveland  Press  headed  one  of  its  editorials :  ' '  Chief, 
call  out  the  A.  P.  L. !  "  In  answer,  the  Chief  of  the  Cleve- 
land Police  did  call  on  the  A.  P.  L.  once  more,  although  this 
was  six  weeks  after  hostilities  had  ceased.  All  of  the  follow- 
ing Saturday  night  and  Sunday  there  were  A.  P.  L.  men 
patrolling  the  streets  of  Cleveland  in  motor  cars  in  company 
with  the  police. 

The  disbanding  of  the  A.  P.  L.  was  openly  deplored  in 
Cleveland.  What  is  going  to  be  the  future  condition  of  the 
United  States  in  these  days  following  the  war?  One  thing 
is  sure,  the  thinking  men  of  the  country  are  uneasy.  There 
is  reason  to  feel  concern,  in  a  city  like  Cleveland,  over  bol- 
shevism  and  labor  troubles.  There  do  not  lack  those  who 
predict  for  all  America  the  wave  of  disregard  for  property 
and  life  which  quite  often  ensues  at  the  close  of  a  great 
war  —  and  this  war  was  the  greatest  upheavel  of  human 
institutions  and  human  values  the  world  has  ever  seen.  But 
matters  in  Cleveland  might  have  been  worse  —  much  worse. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  STORY  OF  CINCINNATI 

Data  from  a  Supposed  Citadel  of  Pro-Germanism — Grati- 
fying Reports  from  the  City  Which  Boasts  a  Rhine  of  its 
Own  —  Alien  Enemies  and  How  They  Were  Handled  — 
Americanization  of  America. 

That  Cincinnati  had  a  vast  population  of  German  descent 
and  of  pro-German  sympathies  was  known  throughout  the 
United  States.  It  would  be  folly  to  say  otherwise.  Had 
open  riots  or  armed  resistance  to  the  draft,  or  to  the  war 
itself,  arisen  in  Cincinnati,  there  were  many  who  would  not 
have  been  surprised.  Those,  however,  did  not  really  know 
the  inherently  solid  quality  of  the  city  on  the  Ohio  River. 
They  may  find  that  from  the  study  of  the  able  report  of 
the  Cincinnati  Division. 

Perhaps  a  very  considerable  amount  of  the  quiet  on  the 
Rhine  at  Cincinnati  was  due  to  the  fact  that  there  was  such 
an  organization  within  its  gates  as  the  American  Protective 
League.  The  members  of  the  League  were  on  the  watch  all 
the  time  for  an>i;hing  dangerous  in  the  way  of  pro-enemy 
activity.  That  the  division  had  a  certain  amount  of  work 
to  do  may  be  seen  from  the  summaries. 

There  were  2,972  investigations  for  disloyalty  and  sedi- 
tion; 4,232  selective  service  investigations;  3,004  suspects 
taken  in  slacker  raids.  Of  propaganda  by  word  of  mouth, 
there  were  7,000  examinations.  Three  hundred  and  seventy 
civilian  applicants  for  overseas  service  were  examined.  There 
were  eighty-one  examinations  made  into  the  character  of 
persons  identified  with  the  I.  W.  W.,  the  People's  Council, 
and  other  pacifist  or  radical  bodies.  The  Secret  Service  had 
fifty  examinations  made  for  it  and  the  Post  Office  three. 
There  were  fourteen  thousand  visits  made  at  homes  and 
places  of  business  of  alien  enemies,  and  twenty-eight  alien 
enemies  were  required  to  report  to  the  supervisor  every  week. 

267 


/ 


268  THE  WEB 

Heatless  Mondays  required  three  hundred  investigations  and 
gasless  Sundays  one  thousand,  five  hundred  and  seventeen. 
In  250  instances  the  A.  P.  L.  rendered  automobile  service  to 
various  Government  departments.  These  figures  show  that 
something  was  doing  in  Cincinnati.  As  to  the  exact  nature  of 
the  activities,  it  is  much  better  to  give  the  sober  and  just 
estimate  of  the  local  chief,  as  gratifjdng  as  it  is  admirable: 

From  its  inception  the  Cincinnati  Division  of  the  American 
Protective  League  was  vibrant  with  possibilities.  Cincinnati 
was  known  from  coast  to  coast  as  a  city  settled  by  Germans. 
It  was  presumed,  of  course,  to  be  very  largely  pro-German 
as  a  result  of  this  reputation.  "Over-the-Rhine"  meant  Cin- 
cinnati to  many  who  lived  outside  of  its  confines.  The  repu- 
tation of  the  city  was  at  stake.  Those  who  knew  Cincinnati, 
however,  felt  that  this  reputation  which  came  to  us  from 
abroad  was  unjustified,  and  that  although  there  was  no  gain- 
saying that  German  blood  flowed  in  the  veins  of  a  very  large 
number  of  its  people,  it  was  still  ninety-nine  per  cent  loyal; 
and  the  record  of  the  war  has  demonstrated  the  truth  of  this 
statement. 

Under  the  direction  and  supervision  of  Calvin  S.  Weakley, 
Special  Agent  in  charge  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  work 
was  carried  on  with  quietness  and  despatch.  He  approached 
every  matter  with  an  open  mind,  and  it  is  to  his  excellent 
judgment  and  his  avoidance  of  brass-band  methods  that  the 
record  of  the  Cincinnati  office  of  the  Bureau  of  Investiga- 
tion and  its  auxiliary,  the  Cincinnati  Division  of  the  Amer- 
ican Protective  League,  has  been  clean  of  criticism.  In  the 
burglar-proof  steel  cabinets,  however,  repose  documents  and 
reports  which  would  create  a  sensation  in  the  community, 
and  perhaps  the  day  of  reckoning  is  not  far.  While  the  fact 
that  many  of  these  acts  occurred  before  the  United  States 
became  an  active  participant  in  the  world  war  may  mean 
legal  immunity,  yet  the  record  is  made,  and  in  piany  cases 
public  opinion  has  been  the  sternest  prosecutor  of  those  indi- 
viduals (many  of  whom  enjoy  the  rights  of  American  citizen- 
ship), whose  sympathies  as  well  as  activities  will  always' 
brand  them  as  having  been  unfit  for  the  privileges  which 
they  still  continue  to  enjoy.  It  has  brought  to  many  of  those 
individuals  social  isolation — a  punishment  incomparable  with 
anything  that  can  be  meted  out  by  judge  or  jury— and  they 
cannot  help  but  feel  the  ignominy  of  their  unpatriotic  actions. 
Loyalty  to  the  country  and  a  fine  patriotism  for  the  cause  was 
the  keynote  which  seemed  to  animate  the  membership. 


THE  STORY  OF  CINCINNATI  269 

Hardly  had  the  ink  dried  upon  the  President's  signature 
to  the  document  which  made  operative  the  original  Selective 
Service  Act,  when  word  filtered  through  to  the  office  of  the 
Cincinnati  Division  American  Protective  League  that  there 
was  an  undercurrent  of  opposition  developing  which  would 
culminate  on  Registration  Day,  June  5th,  1917.  So-called 
Socialists,  who  were  in  fact  German  propagandists,  were  the 
most  active  in  their  criticism.  Venomous  advice  was  being 
offered  to  young  men,  who,  upon  that  historic  day,  would 
enter  their  names  upon  the  rolls  of  the  prospective  great 
■National   Army. 

The  preliminary  information  which  was  gathered  left  no 
doubt  in  the  mind  of  Special  Agent  Weakley,  at  Cincinnati, 
that  unless  an  example  was  made  of  these  so-called  pacifists, 
there  was  danger  of  an  incomplete  registration,  and  it  became 
very  apparent  from  the  preliminary  investigations  made  that 
the  opposition  to  registration  centered  in  a  local  unit  of  a 
Socialist  organization  known  as  the  Eleventh  Ward. 

Out  of  four  operatives  who  entered  into  this  particular  case, 
three  were  dropped,  and  one  became  a  member  of  the  inner 
circle.  The  open  meetings  of  the  club  divulged  nothing,  but 
the  secret  sessions  of  the  inner  circle  developed  the  plan 
which  would  make  as  ineffective  as  possible  registration  in 
Cincinnati  and  which  undoubtedly  would  have  succeeded. 
Circulars  and  posters  were  secretly  printed,  and  on  the  night 
of  June  1  they  were  to  be  distributed  broadcast  throughout 
the  northwestern  section  of  Cincinnati.  This  literature  not 
only  was  seditious  in  character,  but  in  the  opinion  of  the 
District  Attorney,  treasonable. 

The  League  plan  was  so  carefully  and  thoroughly  developed 
that  not  a  guilty  man  escaped.  There  was  quite  a  scene  at 
several  police  stations  when  operatives  of  the  League,  de- 
tailed with  local  police  detectives,  brought  in  their  men,  each 
with  his  pile  of  circulars.  A.  P.  L.  had  direct  evidence  of 
where  these  circulars  had  been  placed — in  letter  boxes,  on 
door-steps,  or  handed  to  individuals  on  the  street — and  thus 
made  each  case  complete  in  itself;  and  when,  the  next  day, 
the  newspapers  told  In  detail  the  story  of  how  this  plan  had 
been  nipped  in  the  bud,  anti-conscriptionists  became  enthusi- 
astic registrants.  Even  men  who  were  arrested  asked  for 
the  privilege  of  registration.  Cincinnati  not  only  gave  the 
quota  estimated  for  it,  but  a  percentage  so  much  higher  as 
to  elicit  surprise. 

After  the  investigation  had  developed  the  real  culprits,  the 
printing  shop  also  was  located,  the  form  from  which  the 
circulars  had  been  printed  confiscated,  and  the  complete  chain 


270  THE  WEB 

of  evidence  was  sufficient  to  bring  a  unanimous  report  from 
the  Grand  Jury,  charging  everyone  involved  with  conspiracy 
against  the  Government. 

This  was  the  first  real  big  work  successfully  undertaken  by 
Cincinnati  Division  of  the  American  Protective  League.  It 
was  carried  out  with  thoroughness  and  dispatch,  and  nothing 
was  left  undone  that  was  necessary  to  make  the  cases  com- 
plete. It  was  wonderful  training  for  the  men  who  had  come 
from  their  business  to  the  work  of  the  League,  and  it  devel- 
oped some  of  Cincinnati  Division's  best  operatives,  who  from 
that  time  on  approached  every  assignment  with  enthusiasm 
and  understanding. 

Cincinnati  Division  supervised  the  parole  of  enemy  aliens 
from  Fort  Oglethorpe  and  the  Federal  jail  in  this  district. 
These  paroled  men,  being  released  from  prison,  were  ordered 
to  report  at  the  office  of  Cincinnati  Division  once  each  week. 
The  day  selected  for  them  to  report  was  Saturday  morning. 
Failure  on  the  part  of  a  paroled  man  to  report  on  the  date 
set  resulted  in  a  prompt  investigation.  So  thorough  was  this 
supervision  that  Cincinnati  Division  could  at  any  time  put 
its  hands  on  these  paroled  men,  whose  ranks  included  actors, 
draughtsmen,  electrical  engineers,  art  glass  designers,  chefs, 
waiters,  barbers,  bakers,  auto  experts,  laborers,  machinists, 
farmers,  and  merchants. 

Only  one  man  refused  to  mend  his  ways  and  live  up  to  the 
regulations.  He  is  now  at  Fort  Oglethorpe.  When  he  first 
was  released,  he  tried  to  induce  the  Federal  authorities  to 
give  him  permission  to  talk  pro-German  so  he  could  "find 
others  who  were  against  this  country,"  as  he  put  it.  He  was 
informed  by  the  Special  Agent  in  charge  of  the  Cincinnati 
office.  Department  of  Justice,  that  he  could  do  better  work  by 
telling  all  his  former  associates  how  foolish  they  were,  trying 
to  work  for  the  Kaiser  in  this  country.  He  had  claimed  that 
his  prison  term  had  changed  his  opinion  and  that  now  he 
was  "for  the  United  States."  He  was  instructed  to  tell  this 
to  his  friends  as  he  would  thereby  be  doing  more  good. 
His  term  of  freedom  did  not  last  long,  for  he  was  soon  at  his 
old  tricks  again.  He  was  interned  for  the  "duration  of  the 
war." 

After  the  German  campaign  against  conscription  in  this 
country  had  fallen  flat,  the  active  propagandists  looked  for 
new  fields  for  their  malicious  and  insidious  work.  The 
notorious  German  propaganda  alliance  known  as  "The 
People's  Council,"  newly  formed  in  New  York,  was  in  its 
Infancy  when  word  of  its  activities  was  brought  to  Cincinnati 
by  an  advocate  of  the  single  tax,  who  up  to  that  time  had  been 


THE  STORY  OF  CINCINNATI  271 

considered  an  extremist,  but  honest  in  intention.  He  became 
associated  with  a  certain  Cincinnatian,  American  born  of 
German  descent,  an  attorney  of  some  reputation.  These  two 
men  contemplated  organizing  in  Cincinnati  a  branch  of  The 
People's  Council. 

From  the  beginning,  the  League  was  represented  at  both  the 
private  and  secret  meetings  of  the  Council,  which,  for  a  time, 
were  held  in  the  attorney's  office,  where  four  or  five  gath- 
ered; but  as  new  recruits  w^ere  enrolled  by  the  Council  and 
larger  quarters  were  required,  they  were  transferred  to  an 
office  in  Odd  Fellow's  Temple  occupied  by  a  former  minister, 
a  Socialist  radical,  a  man  whose  career  marked  him  as  an 
advocate  of  extreme  measures,  and  who  carried  with  him  a 
considerable  following  which  he  had  organized  several  years 
before.  Pacifism  was  the  big  keynote  of  its  original  platform. 
Without  interference,  however,  the  speakers  became  bold. 
The  intellectuals  who  enlisted  under  its  banner  included  a 
leading  Sinn  Feiner,  a  professor  of  a  well-known  college  of 
Cincinnati,  who  was  chairman,  a  pastor  of  the  Lutheran 
Church,  and,  of  course,  the  attorney  and  organizer. 

It  was  the  day  of  the  original  Espionage  Act,  and  it  was 
difficult  under  this  unamended  Act  to  find  violations;  but 
some  of  the  speeches  rang  with  treasonable  utterances.  After 
months  of  this  sort  of  thing,  the  Bureau  of  Investigation, 
Department  of  Justice,  decided  it  was  time  to  act.  A  meeting 
had  been  called  for  Friday  night,  at  the  office  of  the  former 
pastor,  at  which  many  things  were  expected  to  happen,  and  on 
that  night  it  was  decided  to  make  a  search,  not  only  of  the 
meeting  place,  but  of  the  homes  of  the  leaders.  The  District 
Attorney  asked  every  man  present  —  League  operatives,  agents 
of  the  Department  of  Justice,  deputy  United  States  Marshals, 
and  local  police  detectives  who  had  been  assigned  to  the  work, 
to  set  their  watches  with  his.  At  8:30  o'clock  prompt,  the 
search,  under  due  warrant  of  law,  was  made  in  all  parts  of 
the  city,  and  the  papers  and  documents  which  were  brought 
to  the  office  of  the  United  States  Attorney  made  it  impossible 
forever  after  for  The  People's  Council  to  carry  on  its  ne- 
farious activities. 

From  that  day  Cincinnati  was  rid  of  openly  organized  anti- 
government  activities.  Some  of  the  papers  found,  proved  of 
great  value  to  the  Government.  A  special  solicitor  from  the 
office  of  the  Attorney  General  at  Washington  was  assigned 
to  Cincinnati  to  go  over  these  papers,  and  the  information 
which  he  gathered  was  of  great  use  in  many  other  cities. 
As  a  result  of  this  search,  the  professor  who  had  taken  such 
an  important  part  in  the  work  of  The  People's  Council  was 


272  THE  WEB 

censured  by  his  Board,  and  eliminated  from  the  local  theatre 
of  activities. 

The  case  of  The  People's  Council  was  one  of  the  high  spots 
in  the  work  of  Cincinnati  Division,  American  Protective 
League,  and  the  record  in  this  case  is  one  of  which  it  can 
well  be  proud.  Later,  the  former  pastor,  much  to  the  regret 
of  Cincinnati  Division,  was  taken  in  hand  by  citizens  of  Ken- 
tucky for  special  treatment.  His  experience  on  that  dark 
night  in  the  foot-hills  of  Kentucky  evidently  broke  his  spirit 
enough  to  dishearten  him.  He  is  no  longer  a  factor  in 
Bolshevism  in  Cincinnati. 

After  the  reorganization  of  Cincinnati  Division  had  been 
effected,  to  conform  to  the  new  plan  of  the  National  Directors, 
Chief  Gerson  J.  Brown  decided  that  it  would  be  good  policy 
to  keep  in  close  touch  with  the  fifteen  hundred  male  enemy 
aliens  in  Hamilton  County.  Accordingly,  after  fully  consid- 
ering the  matter,  he  organized  the  Enemy  Alien  Bureau.  The 
operatives  were  instructed  as  to  all  regulations  governing 
these  aliens,  so  that  they  could  give  advice  whenever  called 
upon  by  their  charges,  who  did  not  know  just  what  the 
Government  expected  of  them.  All  delinquents  were  taken 
to  the  office  of  the  Marshal  by  American  Protective  League 
members  and  made  to  complete  their  registration.  Following 
out  their  instructions,  American  Protective  League  members 
fully  explained  to  the  aliens  the  object  of  their  visit  and  just* 
what  their  privileges  were  under  the  regulations.  In  a  ma- 
jority of  the  cases,  it  was  found  that  the  alien  really  had  never 
fully  understood  what  the  Government  regulations  were. 

Many  peculiar  situations  were  found.  In  several  cases  it 
developed  that  aliens,  who  had  passes  issued  by  the  Marshal 
permitting  them  to  go  to  their  places  of  employment  and 
return  by  the  most  direct  route,  lived  above  the  store  in  which 
they  worked.  Arrangements  were  made  with  the  Marshal 
whereby  these  men,  when  found  v/orthy,  were  given  permits 
entitling  them  to  enjoy  more  privileges.  Others  were  found 
who  went  direct  to  their  work,  and  on  returning  in  the 
evening,  feared  to  go  out  of  the  house.  Others  would  not 
go  to  church,  fearful  that  they  would  be  arrested  and  interned. 

There  were  also  cases  of  men  who  were  in  business  which 
made  it  necessary  to  go  into  zones  not  mentioned  in  their 
permits.  Many  o'her  odd  cases,  too  numerous  to  mention, 
were  found.  All  were  taken  up  separately  with  the  Marshal, 
and  where  the  League  records  showed  that  the  alien  was  trying 
to  obey  the  regulations,  necessary  permits  were  issued. 

There  were  found  by  American  Protective  League  operatives 
aliens  who  wanted  to  become  citizens  but  who  did  not  know 


THE  STORY  OF  CINCINNATI  373 

what  to  do.  Others  had  tried  to  pass  examinations  in  court, 
bnt  failed.  All  these  were  sent  to  citizenship  schools  and 
now  are  on  the  road  to  becoming  desirable  citizens.  The  work 
of  the  Bureau  has  been  such  that  many  aliens  now  have  a 
different  opinion  of  what  it  means  to  liv^e  in  a  country  where 
all  men  who  behave  themselves  have  an  equal  chance.  In 
one  day,  after  citizenship  schools  were  opened  in  Cincinnati, 
the  Enemy  Alien  Bureau  issued  over  two  hundred  permits  to 
aliens  who  desired  to  gain  knowledge  which  would  permit 
them  to  apply  for  the  necessary  papers. 

This  close  supervision  also  forestalled  attempts  by  agents 
of  the  Kaiser  to  induce  aliens  to  commit  acts  against  this 
Government,  if  they  were  so  inclined.  No  meetings  could  be 
held  without  an  American  Protective  League  member  hearing 
of  it,  as  they  visited  the  alien  at  his  home  and  place  of 
employment  at  irregular  intervals,  and  never  less  than  once 
a  month. 

After  the  -war,  there  will  be  many,  now  classed  as  enemy 
aliens,  who  will  thank  Cincinnati  Division  for  having  helped 
them  at  a  critical  time  when  they  were  floundering  about 
under  regulations  which  they  did  not  understand,  and  feared 
to  ask  anyone  how  to  become  loyal  citizens  of  this  country. 
Of  the  many  curious  cases  Cincinnati  handled,  we  may  re- 
port at  least  one,  which  shows  how  well  the  A.  P.  L.  sometimes 
took  care  of  a  man  who  didn't  deserve  it. 

An  emergency  telephone  call  came  to  the  office  of  the 
American  Protective  League  from  an  official  of  one  of  the 
largest  trust  companies  in  the  city,  to  send  an  operative  to 
the  bank  as  quickly  as  possible.  The  two  men  who  answered 
the  call  found  they  had  what  appeared  to  be  a  German  agent 
in  prospect. 

During  the  afternoon  a  telegram  came  to  the  bank  from  the 
Empire   Trust   Company,   New  York,   authorizing  it  to   place 

$25,000   to   the   credit   of   Frank   K .     K ,   on   his 

arrival  at  the  bank,  seemed  to  be  a  man  about  fifty-five  years 
of  age,  typically  German,  with  all  the  Hindenburg  ear-marks. 
An  over-anxiety  to  display  his  naturalization  papers  in  proving 
his  identity  led  the  bank  officials  to  put  him  off  until  they  had 
been  able  to  communicate  with  the  League.  He  had  given  his 
room  number  at  the  Gibson  Hotel,  and  with  this  information 
in  hand  and  a  code  message  to  the  New  York  Division  to 
investigate  at  that  end,  the  scene  shifted  to  the  hotel. 

His  room  was  searched  but  absolutely  nothing  was  found 
that  could  possibly  throw  light  on  the  use  he  intended  to  make 
of  the  money,  or  the  purpose  of  his  visit  to  Cincinnati.  He 
was  "covered"  that  night  by  operatives  of  the  League,  and 


274  THE  WEB 

on  the  following  day  was  taken  to  the  office  of  the  Special 
Agent  in  charge,  and  there  questioned  for  two  hours,  without 

his  disclosing  anything  of  importance.     K finally  told 

his  story,  and  from  this  point  on  the  plot  quickly  unravels. 

He  was  born  near  Hanover,  Germany,  emigrated  to  America 
at  the  age  of  sixteen,  settled  in  New  York,  married,  and  was 
naturalized  at  the  age  of  twenty-two.  Three  children  blessed 
his  union.  He  was  a  stone-mason  by  trade  for  ten  years 
after  his  marriage;  then  he  entered  the  contracting  line  and 
continued  in  it  for  some  eighteen  years,  later  removing  to 
East  Orange,  N.  J.,  where  for  some  five  years  he  operated  a 
saloon  and  road  house,  later  retiring  from  business  and  re- 
moving to  West  Hoboken,  N.  J. 

After  a  severe  siege  of  rheumatism,  he  was  ordered  by  his 
physician  to  Mount  Clemens,  Michigan,  early  in  the  spring 
of  1918.  At  that  resort  he  came  in  contact  with  two  very 
affable  gentlemen,  "Fred  B.  Grant"  and  "Jack  Connel."  They 
made  a  lavish  display  of  wealth  and  finally  were  successful  in 
getting  him  to  ask  where  these  large  amounts  came  from, 
whereupon  Grant,  who  was  the  spokesman  of  the  two,  told 

K he  was  a  wealthy  coal  operator  of  West  Virginia  and 

that  he   had   a   special   system   of  playing  the   races.     After 

taking  K behind  one  of  the  buildings  at  Mount  Clemens, 

he  swore  him  to  secrecy,  and  "let  him  in"  on  his  get-rich- 
quick  plan. 

The  party  left  Mount  Clemens  and  went  to  the  Vendome 
Hotel,  Newport,  Ky.  They  took  K to  a  supposed  pool- 
room and  in  less  than  a  week  he  had  won  upwards  of  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  in  bets,  whereupon  the  proprietor  of  the 
pool-room  told  him  that  he  could  not  withdraw  this  money, 
under  the  laws  of  the  State  of  Kentucky,  unless  he  had  an 

equal    amount    on    deposit    in    the    State,      K told   his 

daughter  in  Hoboken  that  he  must  have  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  to  complete  a  business  deal.  He  put  up  some  of  the 
money  himself,  and  she  secured  the  rest  by  a  loan  from  the 
Empire  Trust  Co.  Again  the  shuttle  moved  back  to  Cin- 
cinnati,  where  he   arrived   on  Monday,  August   5,   1918,   and 

the  League  came  to  his  rescue.     K was  now  convinced 

that  he  was  marked  for  a  victim,  and  he  did  all  he  could  to 
help  land  his  supposed  friends.  All  these  were  taken  and  the 
prisoners  were  held  in  $15,000  bond.  They  were  notorious 
confidence  men! 

The  pool-room  was  found  with  its  complete  telephone  and 
telegraph  outfit,  which  was  not  connected  with  any  outside 
line.  The  money  which  Kaiser  saw  in  this  pool-room  was 
paper  cut  from  a  New  York  Telephone  directory  to  the  size 


THE  STORY  OF  CINCINNATI  275 

of  a  dollar  bill.  This  paper  was  placed  in  stacks  of  probably 
four  or  five  inches  thick,  with  a  hundred  dollar  bill  placed 
on    top    and    a    hundred    dollar    bill    on    the    bottom.      The 

"money"  lay  around  in  great  profusion.     K stated  with 

bulging  eyes  that  he  saw  "at  least  a  million  dollars  in  this 
room."  At  least,  the  A.  P.  L.  saved  him  $25,000  by  taking  him 
for  a  Cincinnati  German  spy! 


/ 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  STORY  OF  DAYTON 

Aircraft-Center  Well  Cared  For — Midnight  and  All's 
Well — Some  Stories  of  tbe  A.  P.  L.  and  the  Melting  Pot — 
Possible  and  Impossible  Citizens. 

The  thriving  city  of  Dayton,  Ohio,  is  one  of  the  best 
known  towns  of  the  size  in  the  Union.  In  some  way  the 
idea  has  gone  abroad  that  Dayton  is  up-to-date,  modem  and 
advanced  alike  in  industrial,  civic  and  social  waj^.  There 
surely  is  no  reason  to  alter  that  belief  from  the  story  of  the 
A.  P.  L.  turned  in  from  Dayton.  An  additional  interest 
attaches  to  the  report  from  this  industrial  capital  because 
of  the  fact  that  it  has  always  been  a  sort  of  a  capital  of  indus- 
trial enterprise,  and  has  been  known  as  one  of  the  points 
of  manufacture  of  Government  aeroplane  material. 

The  large  foreign  element  gave  rise  to  661  disloyalty  cases 
and  made  necessary  269  instances  of  persuasiveness  in  Lib- 
erty Bond  matters.  For  the  War  Department  there  were 
handled  1,681  slacker  cases  and  1,078  other  cases  under  the 
Selective  Service  Act,  with  387  cases  of  deserters  and  241 
character  and  loyalty  examinations.  The  total  number  of 
investigations  was  6,118.  Many  of  the  local  *'  case  stories  " 
show  that  Ohio  still  has  her  claim  to  be  called  a  center  of 
pro-German  sentiment,  but  the  A.  P.  L.  did  fine  work  in 
the  reclamation  of  such  citizen  material  as  was  worth  re- 
claiming —  some  of  it  was  not  worth  while.  The  American 
Protective  League  has  been  the  best  and  almost  the  first  real 
Immigration  Board  this  country  ever  knew,  and  the  one 
great  need  of  America  to-day  is  a  wise  and  wholly  fearless 
combing  out  of  the  aliens. 

Mr.  George  S.  Blanchard  was  first  Chief  of  the  Dayton 
Division.  In  the  early  days  of  April,  1917,  he  was  talking 
with  a  friend  from  St.  Louis  and  during  the  conversation 
asked  him  what  he  was  doing  toward  the  progress  of  the 

276 


THE  STORY  OF  DAYTON  277 

big  war.  His  friend  replied  that  he  had  gone  into  the  Amer- 
ican Protective  League,  which  had  just  been  organized  in 
St.  Louis.  The  remark  set  him  to  thinking  that  probably 
an  organization  of  this  kind  could  be  effected  in  Dayton.  The 
League  at  that  time  was  in  a  very  primitive  state.  That  is 
to  say,  the  desire  to  assist  the  Department  of  Justice  was 
there,  but  neither  the  League  nor  the  Department  of  Justice 
had  yet  been  able  to  work  out  the  best  method  by  which  inex- 
perienced citizens  could  assist  in  Federal  investigations.  Mr. 
Blanchard  visited  the  divisions  of  the  League  at  Columbus, 
Ohio,  Chicago,  San  Francisco,  New  York  City  and  other 
places,  and  called  a  number  of  times  for  conferences  at  Na- 
tional Headquarters.  The  mode  of  conducting  operations  as 
determined  by  experience  and  observation  of  the  work  carried 
out  by  other  divisions  and  as  directed  by  National  Head- 
quarters was  as  follows :  Alien  Enemy ;  Pro-German ;  Draft 
Board  Matters;  Vice  and  Liquor;  Military  Cooperation; 
Food  and  Fuel ;  Suburban ;  War  Risk  Allotments ;  Head- 
quarters ;  Flying  Squadron ;  Character  Investigations. 

The  general  direction  of  the  work  was  made  by  the  Chief. 
The  work  was  then  carried  out  by  ten  different  divisions, 
each  governed  by  a  Captain  with  as  many  Lieutenants  and 
operatives  as  his  work  demanded.  Later  came  the  general 
division  of  all  workers  into  two  classes  —  Investigation  and 
Information.  The  captains,  lieutenants  and  active  members 
were  taken  from  the  investigators.  In  October,  1918,  Mr. 
Blanchard  resigned  as  Chief  of  the  Dayton  Division  to  enlist 
in  the  Motor  Transport  Corps  of  the  United  States  Army, 
being  succeeded  by  Mr.  Frank  Schwilk,  who  carried  on  the 
w^ork  very  successfully. 

During  a  war  drive,  an  operative,  No.  161,  called  on  a  Mr. 

B ,  who  had  refused  absolutely  to  give  a  cent,  although 

financially  able  to  contribute.  Operative  reports:  I  ques- 
tioned him  as  to  why  he  would  not  give,  and  he  replied: 

"  Why  should  I  give?  I  don't  live  here  anyhow.  My 
body  belongs  to  God  and  He  told  me  not  to  give. ' ' 

**  That's  all  right,"  replied  the  operative,  "  but  you  have 
citizenship  here,  have  you  not  ?  ' ' 

*'  No.  I  vote  in  Heaven.  You  can  take  me  and  place  me 
in  jail,  but  Christ  will  take  care  of  me." 

**  If  the  Germans  came  down  the  street  and  were  about 


278  THE  WEB 

to  strike  down  your  children  and  take  away  your  wife,  what 
would  you  do,  —  sit  down  and  allow  it  ?  " 

"  I  could  not  raise  a  hand  against  them  because  God  tells 
me  not  to  strike  my  enemies,  so  the  Germans  could  do  as  they 
saw  fit." 

"  Religious  crank  —  what's  the  use?  "  asks  the  operative. 

An  old  man  and  his  wife,  both  German,  were  reported  to 
the  A.  P.  L.  one  day  last  summer  as  being  pro-German  and 
Lieutenant  No.  177  was  assigned  to  the  case.  He  called  on 
the  old  couple  and  found  them  very  German  indeed  —  so 
much  so,  in  fact,  that  their  niece  was  produced  to  act  as 
interpreter.  The  old  man,  when  he  realized  the  object  of 
the  visit,  became  greatly  agitated,  and  trembling  like  an 
aspen  leaf,  he  hurriedly  produced  his  naturalization  papers 
and  protested  that  three  times  had  he  foresworn  the  Kaiser. 
At  last,  as  final  proof  of  loj^alty  to  his  adopted  land,  the 
old  man  displayed  some  sheets  of  manuscript  —  gospel  songs, 
which  he  himself  had  written  in  his  mother  tongue !  At  this 
point  his  wife,  who  had  been  as  distressed  as  her  husband 
over  the  interview,  could  restrain  herself  no  longer. 

' '  Ach  no !  "  she  spluttered.  "  No !  Ve  are  not  Chermans. 
Ve  are  not  Chermans !  Ve  are  Christians !  Ve  are  Chris< 
tians!  " 

Operative  No.  113  reports  the  details  of  a  case  which 
has  in  it  endless  possibilities  of  mischief : 

There  was  held  in  Dayton,  Ohio,  during  the  summer  of 
1918,  the  national  meeting  of  Automotive  Engineers,  and  at  the 
A.  P.  L.  luncheon  that  day  it  was  reported  that  a  German  from 
a  nearby  city,  who  was  an  associate  member  of  the  Automotive 
Engineers,  was  registered  in  Dayton  and  would  attend  the 
meetings  of  the  convention.  From  the  history  we  had  of 
this  gentleman  from  the  files  of  the  A.  P.  L.,  he  was  undoubt- 
edly a  dangerous  citizen  and  one  who  should  not  have  the 
opportunity  of  inspecting  and  carefully  examining  the  Liberty 
Motors  and  many  other  new  ideas  which  were  being  sho^^^l 
at  the  convention.  I  offered  to  investigate  the  situation,  took 
the  information  which  was  in  our  hands,  got  in  touch  with 
the  head  of  the  Aircraft  Production  Board  here  and  was 
immediately  sent  to  the  convention,  where  I  conferred  with 
the  Secretary,  explaining  to  him  in  detail  the  facts.  We 
found  that  our  man  was  not  registered  at  the  convention, 
and  we  made  arrangements  with  the  registrar  that  as  soon 


THE  STORY  OF  DAYTON  279 

as  he  made  his  appearance,  some  one  should  shadow  him 
and  see  that  he  did  not  have  access  to  any  information,  or 
special  displays,  and  that  he  should  be  kept  under  surveil- 
lance during  his  entire  time  in  our  city.  I  knew  where  he 
was  stopping  and  kept  him  under  surveillance.  We  frus- 
trated any  plan  he  might  have  had  to  gain  confidential  infor- 
mation. All  this  was  done  without  his  having  any  idea  that 
anyone  knew  his  history  or  his  reason  for  coming  to  the 
convention. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  eases  investigated  was  that  of 
two  families,  Mr.  A.  and  Mr.  B.,  who  lived  on  the  same 
street.  Mr.  A.  died,  leaving  one  son  of  draft  age,  the  main 
support  of  his  mother.  He  filed  no  exemption  claim,  was 
inducted  into  the  United  States  Army,  and  is  now  serving 
in  France.  In  the  family  of  Mr.  B.,  father  and  mother  were 
both  living,  both  born  in  Germany.  They  had  a  son  of 
draft  age,  who  was  inducted  into  the  United  States  Army 
and  sent  to  Camp  Sherman,  where  he  stayed  for  three 
months  and  was  then  discharged  because  of  flat  feet.  He 
came  home  and  went  to  work  at  his  trade  as  a  plumber.  Mr. 
B.,  Sr.,  owned  the  house  wherein  the  widow  of  A.  lived,  and 
immediately  upon  the  return  of  B.,  Jr.,  proceeded  to  raise 
the  widow's  rent  and  put  her  out  of  the  house.  The  Red 
Cross  had  been  paying  the  widow's  rent,  but  finally  legal 
notice  was  served  allowing  her  ten  days  in  which  to  vacate 
the  house. 

An  A.  P.  L.  operative  took  the  matter  up  with  a  local 
attorney  and  arranged  for  the  protection  of  the  widow  in 
case  force  should  be  used  to  eject  her ;  he  then  called  on  Mr. 
B.,  Sr.,  again  and  began  praising  him  regarding  his  suc- 
cess in  life,  his  unusual  ability,  and  so  on.  He  finally  asked 
him  this  question : 

"  Mr.  B,,  if  you  were  in  America  and  your  mother  in 
Germany,  and  some  one  were  annoying  and  abusing  her  and 
trying  to  force  her  out  in  the  street,  what  would  vou  do  ?  " 

*''  I  would  fight,"  he  said. 

Then  the  operative  reversed  the  question  and  cited  the 
other  young  man  who  was  fighting  for  his  country,  and  some 
one  trying  to  put  his  mother  out  into  the  street.  Mr.  B. 
silently  looked  down  at  his  feet  and  then  said : 

''  You  have  proven  to  me  my  great  mistake.    I  have  done 


280  THE  WEB 

wrong  and  am  going  to  make  everything  right.*'  He  dis- 
missed his  case  in  court,  apologized  to  the  widow,  and  from 
aM  recent  observation,  is  trying  to  be  a  truly  Americam 
citizen. 

Another  operative  reports : 

During  the  spring  of  1918  there  were  rumors  in  the  city 

of  Dayton  that  Mr.  B ,  a  hardware  merchant,  American 

born  but  of  German  parentage,  was  very  pro-German  in  his 

talk   and  attitude,   and  as  I   had   known   the  man  for   some 

years,  I  made  it  a  point  to  get  his  viewpoint  as  to  the  war 

.    and  his  opinion  regarding  the  United  States  entering  the  war. 

Mr.   B was   very   guarded   in   everything  he   said,   but 

would  always  intimate  just  enough  to  arouse  the  anger  of  a 
good  American  citizen,  and  \rhile  he  would  not  make  any 
statements  that  could  be  considered  as  absolutely  unpatriotic 
or  dangerous,  yet  it  was  evident  that  at  heart  he  was  pro- 
German  and  was  quietly  spreading  propaganda  in  favor  of 
Germany.  I  talked  to  him  until  I  found  that  I  was  getting  a 
little  too  warm  around  the  collar  and  would  have  to  move  on. 

One  morning  I   was  quite  interested   when   B advised 

me  that  he  was  going  to  enter  a  certain  OflEicers'  Training 
Camp  and  would  leave  on  a  certain  fixed  date,  two  weeks  later. 
I  pumped  him  as  well  as  I  could  to  get  all  the  facts,  which 
within  an  hour's  time  I  communicated  to  headquarters.  The 
information  was  communicated  to  headquarters  of  the  Oflacers' 

Training  Camp  and  B was  advised  by  the  proper  officer 

that  he  need  not  report.  What  reason  they  gave  him  I  did 
not  know! 

I  called  on  B about  a  week  later  and  expressed  to 

him  my  surprise  that  he  was  still  here  and  asked  why  he  had 
not  gone  to  camp.  He  replied  that  he  was  too  busy  to  get 
away  and  would  wait  until  a  later  period.  This  excuse,  of 
course,  was  all  right  with  me,  but  he  did  not  know  that 
some  one  had  been  on  his  trail  and  kept  him  from  becoming 
well  acquainted  with  the  inside  workings  of  training  camp 
activities,  and  removed  the  possibility  of  his  slipping  across 
his  German  propaganda. 

Dayton  sends  in  another  story,  worth  pondering  and  re- 
membering by  every  American.  This  book  is  written  for 
Americans.  The  story  will  show  what  other  races  we  some- 
times harbor.    The  man's  name  is  given. 

Captains  No.  145  and  No.  245  were  given  an  assignment 


THE  STORY  OF  DAYTON  ggl 

entitled  '*  Frank  Weiss,  alien  enemy;  Refusal  to  Register." 
The  story,  as  told  by  them,  is  as  follows : 

Having  beea  informed  that  Weiss  was  a  dangerous  char- 
acter, we  proceeded  to  his  place  of  employment  and  asked  for 
an  interview,  which  was  granted  by  the  superintendent  of 
the  concern.  We  found  W^eiss  busily  engaged  at  his  work, 
told  him  our  business  and  were  informed  that  we  could  "go  to" 
so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  that  he  had  not  registered  and 
did  not  intend  to  do  so,  although  he  had  been  given  seven 
days  in  which  to  make  up  his  mind  or  go  to  jail.  We  did 
not  argue  the  question  with  him  but  immediately  took  him 
before  the  Special  Agent  in  charge  of  the  Department  of 
Justice,  Harold  L.  Scott.  Mr.  Scott  asked  him  what  his 
objection  was  to  registering  with  his  Local  Board,  as  the  law 
required,  to  which  Weiss  answered: 

"I  have  registered  with  the  police  and  that  is  sufficient. 
I'm  not  a  citizen  of  this  country.  I'm  a  subject  of  the  Kaiser, 
and  there's  one  thing  sure — after  this  war  is  over,  I'm  sure 
going  to  leave  thi^  country.  I've  thought  it  all  over  and 
that's  what  I'm  going  to  do." 

U.  S.  Marshal  Devanney  happened  to  be  present  and  ex- 
plained to  Weiss  that  the  best  thing  for  him  to  do  was  to 
register,  telling  him  that  he  did  not  blame  him  for  maintaining 
his  allegiance  to  his  own  country;  that  he  admired  a  man 
always  for  doing  what  he  thought  was  right,  but  that  he  must 
conform  to  the  laws  of  this  coiintry  governing  alien  enemies. 

All  through  the  interview,  Weiss's  attitude  was  one  of 
defiance,  but  he  thought  the  matter  over  for  a  few  minutes 
and  then  stated  that  he  was  willing  to  register  with  the  Local 
Board,  He  was  escorted  to  the  Board  by  No.  145  and  the 
Chairman  asked: 

"Mr.  Weiss,  where  do  you  work  and  what  salary  do  you 
earn?" 

"I  work  at  B Machine  Company  and  get  eighty-five 

cents  an  hour;  with  overtime  I  make  $100.00  per  week." 

"Making  such  a  salary  as  that,  Mr.  Weiss,  don't  you  think 
you  owe  this  country  something?  You  could  not  possibly 
earn  that  much  money  in  one  week  in  Germany,  could  you?" 

"No,"  replied  Weiss,  "but  I'm  a  skilled  mechanic  and  that's 
what  they  pay  In  this  country,  and  I'm  entitled  to  it." 

"Yes,"  replied  the  Chairman,  "but  in  view  of  the  fact  that 
this  country  affords  you  such  good  wages  and  allows  you  to 
send  your  children  to  the  public  schools,  don't  you  think  it 
your  duty  to  at  least  comply  with  all  the  laws  governing 
alien  enemiea  such  as  you?" 


282  THE  WEB 

To  this  Weiss  made  no  reply,  but  by  constant  questioning 
the  questionnaire  was  finally  filled  out  and  Weiss  was  asked 
to  "swear"  to  it,  to  which  he  replied: 

"I  will  take  no  oath.  I  do  not  believe  in  a  God,  and  refuse 
to  recognize  him  in  any  way  whatsoever." 

His  convictions  in  this  matter  were  respected.  He  was 
allowed  to  aflQrm,  and  was  then  taken  to  the  Miami  County 
jail.  After  his  incarceration  it  developed  that  two  of  Weiss's 
children  were  living  with  a  Mrs.  Smith  in  Dayton,  Ohio — two 
bright -little  girls — and  that  there  would  have  to  be  some 
provision  made  for  them,  as  Mrs.  Smith  was  simply  boarding 
the  children  and  was  unable  to  keep  them  unless  their  board 
was  paid.  Mrs.  Smith  wrote  a  letter  to  Weiss  setting  forth 
the  facts,  to  which  he  replied  that  she  should  "take  the  chil- 
dren to  the  office  of  the  United  States  Marshal  and  leave  them 
there." 

Mrs.  Smith  brought  the  children  to  the  office  of  the  United 
States  Marshal,  who  made  arrangements  with  the  Juvenile 
Court  to  place  the  children  in  the  Orphans'  Home,  w^here 
they  were  to  be  cared  for  until  Weiss  was  released.  Weiss 
was  arrested  on  October  24,  1918,  and  on  account  of  good 
behavior,  was  granted  a  parole  on  November  14  and  was 
released  from  the  Miami  County  jail  on  December  5,  1918. 
Immediately  upon  being  granted  his  freedom,  after  having 
complied  with  all  the  rules  and  regulations  governing  his 
parole,  he  went  to  the  Juvenile  Court  and  obtained  release 
papers  for  his  two  children,  who  were  confined  in  the  Orphans' 
Home,  the  Judge  of  the  Juvenile  Court  having  been  notified 
that  Weiss's  behavior  since  his  incarceration  had  been  first- 
class  and  it  was  thought  that  he  really  had  a  change  of  heart. 
But  it  was  the  same  old  story  of  "Kamerad!  Kamerad!  "  As 
soon  as  Weiss  had  obtained  the  release  papers  for  his  two 
children  he  presented  himself  at  the  institution  where  they 
were  being  cared  for  and  demanded  them  immediately. 

"They  are  in  school  now,"  replied  Mrs.  Hartrum,  Matron 
of  the  Home,  "but  will  be  dismissed  in  about  twenty  minutes. 
Won't  you  be  seated  and  wait  for  them?" 

"No,"  he  replied,  "I'm  tired  of  this  damned  dirty  red  tape. 
I  want  them  right  now." 

Pauline,  the  office  girl,  hearing  Weiss's  remark  and  fearing 
trouble  for  the  teacher,  ran  to  the  school  and  related  what 
she  had  heard,  so  that  in  case  Weiss  came  to  the  school  to 
demand  the  children,  the  teacher  would  be  prepared  for  him. 
Pauline  was  right,  as  Weiss  refused  to  wait  for  the  coming 
of  his  children  and  left  Mrs.  Hartrum,  going  to  the  school 
and  demanding  that  the  children  be  turned  over  to  him  imme- 


THE  STORY  OF  DAYTON  283 

diately.  He  was  told  that  school  was  just  being  dismissed 
and  that  he  should  wait  at  the  door  for  the  children  and 
could  get  them  as  they  came  out.  When  he  at  last  obtained 
possession  of  the  children  he  took  them  toward  the  Home 
and  was  met  at  the  gate  by  Pauline,  who  told  him  that  Mrs. 
Hartrum  had  requested  that  he  bring  the  children  in  that  she 
might  change  their  clothes,  as  they  were  wearing  the  uniform 
of  the  Home.  Weiss  struck  at  Pauline,  saying:  "I'll  knock 
you  down  and  slap  your  face  if  you  don't  keep  still." 

Pauline  rushed  into  the  house  to  tell  Mrs.  Hartrum  and 
Weiss  followed  closely  behind  her. 

"I  want  my  children  and  I  want  them  now,"  said  Weiss. 

"You  can  have  them  as  soon  as  I  take  them  to  their  room 
and  change  their  clothes,"  replied  Mrs.  Hartrum. 

"You  will  not  take  them  from  this  room.     I'm  G d d 

tired  of  this  red  tape  business,  I'm  not  going  to  wait,  and 
don't  you  dare  to  take  these  children  from  this  office." 

Mrs.  Hartrum  replied  that  she  would  take  them  to  their 
room  and  change  their  clothes  and  then  bring  them  back. 
Whereupon  Weiss  pushed  ^Nlrs.  Hartrum  backwards  and  she 
fell  into  a  chair,  her  head  striking  a  table  nearby,  and  he 
then  struck  her  as  she  lay  on  the  floor,  took  his  children  and 
hurried  down  the  street  to  a  Fifth  Street  car. 

Mrs.  Hartrum  screamed.  Her  cries  were  heard  by  an  at- 
tendant in  the  yard,  who  came  to  her  assistance,  but  Weiss 
had  fled.  The  attendant  got  into  an  automobile  and  followed 
the  street  car,  and  when  Weiss  alighted  uptown  with  his 
children,  he  was  arrested  by  the  traflSc  policeman,  the  story 
of  Weiss  having  been  previously  related  to  him  by  the  at- 
tendant. 

Weiss  was  taken  to  police  headquarters,  the  proper  author- 
ities were  notified,  and  after  a  thorough  investigation  his 
parole  was  annulled  and  he  was  again  committed  to  the 
Federal  jail.  Investigation  showed  that  Weiss  was  really  an 
anarchist  at  heart,  and  on  the  same  day  the  assault  was  com- 
mitted upon  Mrs.  Hartrum,  the  following  advertisement  ap- 
peared in  the  Dayton  Journal: 

WANTED — Dayton  men  and  women  out  of 
work  to  send  names  and  addresses  to 
FRANK  WEISS,  Post  Office  Box  387,  to 
form  a  union  to  g'et  Justice  to  make  the 
American  workman's  home  a  decent  place 
to   live   in. 

A  few  days  later  the  good  word  came  to  us  that  Weiss  had 
been  interned  at  Fort  Oglethorpe  until  after  the  war,  and 
will  be  deported  at  that  time. 


284  THE  WEB 

If  a  few  hundred  thousand  more  went  witk  Herr  Weiss, 
this  country  would  be  yet  better  off.  His  attitude  is  not  un- 
usual —  America  is  simply  a  place  for  making  easy  money, 
but  Germany  is  the  real  place  for  a  man !  How  should  we 
feel  about  letting  in  a  few  hundred  thousands  of  the  recently 
demobilized  German  army?  It  is  reported  in  the  European 
despatches  that  many  of  them  are  planning  to  come  to  Amer- 
ica as  soon  as  possible.  The  ablest  publicists  of  the  day  agree 
that  American  immigration  must  be  sharply  restricted.  Some 
extremists  believe  that  practically  all  immigration  should 
be  stopped  for  a  term  of  ten  years. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  STORY  OF  DETROIT 

History  of  the  Great  Munition  City— Clock-Like  Mechan- 
ism of  A.  P.  L.— How  the  War  Plants  were  Protected— 
Guarding  the  Neck  of  the  Great  Lakes  Bottle. 

It  often  has  been  said  that  the  shipping  of  the  Great 
Lakes,  all  of  which  passes  through  the  Detroit  River,  is 
greater  in  annual  tonnage  than  that  which  goes  through  the 
Suez  Canal  or  the  Panama  Canal.  A  continual  procession 
of  ore  ships  and  carriers  of  other  freight  passes  by  the  water 
front  of  Detroit,  going  and  coming  on  the  clear,  blue,  rapid 
flood  of  the  river  which  may  be  called  the  ''  neck  of  the 
bottle  "  of  the  Great  Lakes. 

Obviously,  such  a  situation,  collecting  the  riches  of  an 
empire,  is  one  offering  its  own  purely  geographical  menace. 
An  unwatched  enemy  could  sit  on  Detroit  River  front  and 
destroy  untold  billions  in  property  in  the  course  of  a  month. 
But  no  such  enemy  did  any  such  thing  in  this  war. 

Speaking  of  Detroit  itself,  without  reference  to  its  geo- 
graphical situation,  it  is  to  be  said  that  it  had  as  many  muni- 
tion contracts  as  any  city  in  the  United  States  —  Detroit 
contracts  for  war  material  and  munitions  ran  over  $400,- 
000,000.  These  great  war  plants  attracted  the  attention  of 
men  hostile  to  this  country.  No  one  can  tell  how  much  harm 
was  wished  against  such  enterprises  by  aliens  who  only 
awaited  their  opportunity.  The  point  is  that  this  twenty 
miles  of  water  front  of  Detroit,  these  miles  of  railroad  tracks 
for  switching  facilities,  these  many  great  buildings  where 
manufacturing  went  on,  were  kept  free  from  any  destructive 
enemy  activity.  That  is  a  great  story  of  itself,  and  far 
greater  than  it  would  have  been  had  it  to  record  some  great 
disaster  —  interesting  and  thrilling,  but  none  the  less  a  disas- 
ter.   Detroit  had  no  disasters.    Instead,  it  had  the  A.  P.  L. 

Detroit  division  began  operations  in  the  Spring  of  1917, 

285 


286  THE  WEB 

and  at  first  was  financed  by  the  payment  of  a  one  dollar 
initiation  fee  by  each  member.  This  continued  until  De- 
cember, 1917,  when  it  was  seen  that  this  division  could  not 
go  on  unless  better  financed.  A  meeting  of  officers  of  promi- 
nent manufacturers  of  Detroit  was  held,  and  these  assured 
the  division  better  quarters  and  competent  finances.  A 
committee  went  to  Washington  to  see  the  Attorney  General, 
with  the  result  that  the  offices  of  the  Department  of  Justice 
and  those  of  the  League  were  established  close  together. 

Mr.  Fred  M.  Randall,  the  first  Chief,  resigned  in  May, 
1918,  and  was  replaced  by  Mr.  Frank  H.  Croul,  former 
Commissioner  of  Police,  who  took  the  oath  of  Chief  not 
only  for  Detroit  but  also  for  the  County  of  Wayne.  He 
started  in  by  reorganizing  the  work. 

Since  the  Detroit  contracts  for  war  material  were  so 
enormous  —  Detroit  claims  they  were  greater  in  volume  than 
for  any  other  city  in  the  country  —  a  division  was  organ- 
ized under  the  name  "  Plants  Protection  Department."  A 
thorough  covering  of  each  plant  was  made  and  a  captain  of 
the  A.  P.  L.  was  stationed  in  each  factory,  where  he  had 
entire  supervision  and  reported  direct  to  the  Plants  Pro- 
tection Department  at  the  League's  main  office.  That  this 
system  worked  well  may  be  shown  by  the  records.  Detroit 
was  practically  free  of  any  destruction  of  war  material. 
Several  attempts  to  blow  up  plants  were  frustrated.  It  was 
not  unusual  for  a  man  to  be  brought  in  from  the  plants  for 
an  interview,  and  many  such  cases  were  turned  over  to  the 
Department  of  Justice  and  District  Attorney's  office.  The 
dynamiter  and  other  alien  enemies  were  held  down  hitless. 

A  Pro-German  Department  was  organized  with  captains, 
lieutenants  and  operatives  under  charge  of  an  Inspector. 
The  Inspector  assigned  all  complaints,  took  all  reports  and 
returned  them  to  the  Record  Department  where  the  original 
papers  were  attached,  and  then  forwarded  them  to  the  Pro- 
German  Committee  room  where  they  were  examined  and 
passed  upon. 

A  third  department  was  called  the  Selective  Service,  its 
work  being  to  attend  to  the  local  boards  of  Detroit,  of  which 
there  were  twenty-seven,  exclusive  of  those  in  the  district 
and  Wayne  County.  A  unique  manner  of  handling  delin- 
iquents  was  inaugurated  —  and  why  all  states  did  not  adopt 


THE  STORY  OF  DETROIT  287 

the  same  system  is  a  mystery.  This  bureau  was  kept  open 
to  receive  delinquents  twenty-four  hours  a  day  and  handled 
thousands  of  draft  cases. 

Department  No.  4  handled  all  personal  cases,  such  as  ap- 
plicants for  war  service  or  for  commissions.  Department  No. 
5  had  the  soldiers'  allotment  cases.  The  last  of  the  depart- 
ments was  the  Emergency.  This  department  held  a  group 
of  experienced  and  reliable  operatives  who  held  themselves 
in  readiness  to  obey  any  call,  whether  during  business  hours 
or  in  the  cold,  gray  dawn.  Four  shifts  were  Avorked  by 
squads,  six  hours  each,  so  that  no  matter  what  time  a  tele- 
phone rang  there  was  someone  on  the  desk.  Emergency  De- 
partment was  of  great  service  to  the  local  draft  boards,  from 
whose  shoulders  A.  P.  L.  took  all  the  responsibility.  It  very 
often  apprehended  men  who  were  ready  to  make  a  quick  get- 
away. 

In  connection  with  Plants  Protection  work,  there  was  a 
system  whereby  the  plant  sent  to  the  main  office  each  day 
a  personnel  card  saying  that  such  and  such  a  man  had 
applied  for  employment,  that  he  had  registered  in  such  and 
such  a  town  and  that  his  classification  was  as  shown  on  the 
card.  Then  the  central  office  would  write  to  the  man's  local 
board  asking  about  him.  If  he  was  wanted,  a  complaint 
was  made  out  against  him  and  the  Emergency  squad  was 
ordered  to  locate  him  and  take  him  at  once  to  the  Bureau  of 
Delinquents.  The  number  of  daily  notices  sent  in  by  dif- 
ferent boards  all  through  the  United  States  several  times 
ran  into  three  figures. 

Often  the  Department  of  Justice  would  want  emergency 
help  to  cover  a  suspect  who  was  on  his  way  to  Detroit  under 
charge  of  some  D.  J.  agent.  Detroit  operatives  would  meet 
the  train  and  keep  surveillance  until  the  party  left  the  city. 
In  the  matter  of  raids  on  dance  halls  and  theatres  for  evaders 
and  slackers,  the  Emergency  Division  also  gave  great  assist- 
ance to  the  police.  It  often  took  to  the  central  headquarters 
hundreds  of  men  who  could  not  show  proper  credentials. 

A.  P.  L.  Detroit  Division  took  under  charge  also  the  tre- 
mendous tonnage  of  the  Detroit  River.  Operators  boarded 
every  boat  going  up  or  do^vn  the  river,  and  each  man  on 
that  boat  was  examined  as  to  his  credentials  and  citizenship. 
A  man  might  be  allowed  to  go  on  his  trip  under  guarantee 


288  THE  WEB 

of  the  captain,  but  in  the  meantime  if  there  was  any  doubt 
the  wires  were  kept  hot  further  along  the  Lakes  to  see  if  the 
man  was  wanted.  Several  were  apprehended  in  this  way  at 
ports  of  call  on  information  furnished  by  Detroit. 

Another  A.  P.  L.  custom  was  to  investigate  each  actor's 
card  as  he  appeared  at  any  theatre,  and  if  there  was  any 
doubt,  wire  his  board  giving  his  description  and  asking  for 
his  status.  Several  alien  actors  were  landed  in  that  way  — 
who  were  bad  actors.  They  could  not  get  away  because  they 
were  booked.  A.  P.  L.  never  waited,  but  always  was  on 
hand  at  the  first  performance  of  a  company.  These  investi- 
gations furnished  several  theatrical  men  for  Uncle  Sam's 
Army. 

The  division  worked  to  protect  the  Government  and  to 
protect  the  people  also.  There  were  a  number  of  cases  where 
a  man  and  wife  were  reconciled;  where  a  man  and  woman 
had  been  living  together  without  marriage  and  where  a  mar- 
riage was  performed;  where  a  soldier's  dependents  were  in 
destitute  circumstances  and  did  not  get  the  allotment.  Domes- 
tic tragedies  such  as  these  ran  into  hundreds,  and  quite  often 
the  division  was  able  to  straighten  them  out.  Many  a  man 
was  considered  a  slacker  who  had  tried  every  means  of  get- 
ting into  the  Army.  Many  a  man  looked  healthy,  though 
the  Army  regulations  disqualified  him.  Such  men  were,  as  a 
rule,  sensitive  as  to  their  physical  condition.  The  division 
made  things  clearer  and  made  them  easier  in  many  cases. 

There  were  many  ways  in  which  the  division  proved  itself 
useful  on  a  common-sense  and  practical  business  basis.  For 
instance,  a  soldier,  gone  to  France,  left  his  home  in  charge 
of  a  friend  who  had  agreed  to  rent  it,  keep  up  the  improve- 
ments, and  so  on.  A.  P.  L.  found  that  the  friend  had  col- 
lected the  rent  for  months,  but  did  not  keep  up  the  improve- 
ments and  did  not  pay  the  taxes.  It  was  found  he  had  col- 
lected several  hundred  dollars  and  had  not  paid  out  anything. 
He  happened  to  own  a  house  of  his  own,  so  he  mortgaged 
that  and  paid  over  the  money  he  had  collected.  A.  P.  L. 
arranged  with  one  of  the  banks  to  act  as  trustee  for  the 
soldier.  The  taxes  were  paid  and  the  rents  are  now  being 
placed  to  the  credit  of  the  soldier.  If  it  had  not  been  for 
the  A.  P.  L.,  the  soldier  would  have  found  his  property  badly 
depreciated  on  his  return. 


THE  STORY  OF  DETROIT  289 

This  gives  the  barest,  and,  indeed,  a  most  vague  idea  of 
the  many  and  well-organized  activities  of  this  division.  As 
a  machine  of  protection  it  was  deadly  efficient.  No  place  in 
the  country  had  more  to  lose  than  had  Detroit.  It  was  a 
vulnerable  point.  It  was  the  armor  and  weapons,  offensive 
and  defensive,  of  the  A.  P.  L.  which  guarded  it.  The 
manufacturers  of  Detroit  furnished  cash  for  the  A.  P.  L. 
The  individual  citizens  of  Detroit  did  not  pay  a  cent,  nor 
did  the  United  States  Government.  Recognizing  this  un- 
selfish work  of  thousands  of  its  citizens,  the  Detroit  Patriotic 
Fund  Committee  in  July,  1918,  made  an  unsolicited  grant 
of  sufficient  funds  to  keep  the  division  going  for  another 
year. 

Detroit  Division  had  a  total  of  30,056  complaints  entered 
on  the  files.  Of  members  there  were  enrolled  in  all  3,903. 
To  each  of  these  in  good  standing  there  was  given  an  en- 
graved testimonial,  his  sole  pay  for  months  of  time  given 
free  to  his  country : 

THE    WAYNE    COUNTY    DIVISION    presents    this    testi- 
monial to  in  appreciation  of  your 

volunteer  enlistment,  as  a  member  without  remuneration,  for 
the  assignment  to  any  duties  that  might  arise  in  connection 
with  the  requirements  of  the  Government  for  the  duration  of 
the  Great  War.  We  especially  desire  to  thank  you  for  your 
patriotic  services  in  making  this  Division  so  valuable  an 
adjunct  to  the  general  success  attained  by  the  Organization 
during  the  strenuous  period  just  passed. 

FRANK  H.  CROUL,  Chief. 

The  total  of  30,056  investigations  were  distributed  as 
follows : 

Department  of  Justice  cases :  Alien  enemy  activities,  male 
500,  female  400,  total  900;  Espionage  Act,  disloyalties  and 
sedition,  2,000;  sabotage,  1,000;  anti-military,  etc.,  250; 
propaganda,  (a)  word  of  mouth,  5,000,  (b)  printed  matter, 
25,  total,  5,025;  radical  organizations,  I.  W.  W.,  Peo^jle's 
Council,  etc.,  100;  bribery,  150;  naturalization  applicants, 
550;  impersonating  officers,  25;  other  investigations,  1,000, 
total,  1,575;  total  Department  of  Justice  cases,  11,000. 

War  Department  cases:  Counter-espionage  for  Military 
Intelligence,  800 ;  Selective  Service  Regulations,  15,756 ;  work 


290  THE  WEB 

or  fight  order,  300;  character  and  loyalty,  (a)  civilian  ap- 
plicants for  overseas,  500,  (b)  applicants  for  commissions, 
400,  total  900;  camp  desertions  and  absent  without  leave, 
600 ;  total,  18,356. 

Other  branches  of  the  Government:  Food  and  Fuel  Ad- 
ministrations, 200;  Treasury  Department,  War  Kisk  insur- 
ance allotments,  etc.,  500.  Grand  total  of  investigations 
listed  January  1,  1919,  30,056. 

Detroit  Division  assisted  the  Bureau  of  Delinquents  and 
the  Police  Department  in  several  raids  for  slackers  at  which 
about  5,000  or  6,000  men  Avere  examined  for  registration 
cards.  Those  who  had  registered  and  qualified  are  not  in- 
cluded above.  They  would  number  about  5,000  more.  The 
division  also  gave  material  assistance  to  the  police  and  fire 
departments,  especially  during  the  armistice  days,  when  from 
four  hundred  to  five  hundred  operatives  were  on  special 
duty. 

It  would  be  rather  bootless  to  delve  deep  into  the  indi- 
vidual records  of  a  city  where  the  totals  are  so  large,  but 
a  few  of  the  Detroit  cases  might  be  given  in  passing.  One 
of  these  had  to  do  with  an  alleged  attempt  of  a  draft  board 
official  to  obtain  money  from  a  registrant  for  keeping  him 
out  of  the  service.  That  complaint  came  in  at  noon.  By 
four  o'clock  of  the  same  afternoon  Lieutenant  No.  610  had 
the  facts.  That  was  Saturday,  and  Monday  was  Armistice 
Day.  Tuesday  morning  the  matter  came  up  before  a  judge 
of  the  Federal  Court.  A  thirteen  months'  sentence  at  Leav- 
enworth penitentiary^  was  imposed  the  third  day  after  the 
complaint  came  in. 

This  accuation  was  that  a  clerk,  S.  W (the  name  is 

unpronounceable)    of  Board  No.   6  had  told  a  registrant, 

G ,   apparently   of  the   same  nationality   as   himself, 

that  for  a  certain  sum  he  would  keep  him  out  of  the  draft. 
He  was  to  appear  between  noon  and  one  o  'clock  on  November 

9  and  make  the  payment.     Operative  says  he  told  G 's 

employers  to  pay  him  the  nine  dollars  due  him,  and  he  took 

the  numbers  of  the  bills.     ''I  told  G to  come  with  me 

to  Local  Board  No.  6,"  he  says,  ''and  see  this  clerk  whose 
name  I  did  not  know,  and  if  he  took  the  money  to  report  to 
me  on  the  first  floor  of  the  building.  In  the  meantime  I 
informed  one  of  the  members  of  our  Delinquent  Board  of 


THE  STORY  OF  DETROIT  291 

my  intentions,  with  a  view  to  forestalling  any  later  accusa- 
tion that  the  money  had  been  'planted'  by  the  clerk.     In  a 

little  while  G appeared  and  said  he  had  paid  the 

money  to  the  clerk,  who  demanded  that  he  bring  in  some 
more  money  the  following  Monday,  as  that  was  not  enough. 

I  then  went  to  Local  Board  No.  6  with  G ,  who  pointed 

out  this  clerk  as  the  one  who  had  taken  the  money.  I  took 
this  clerk  into  a  side  room,  accompanied  by  the  others.  He 
acknowledged  he  had  the  money  and  that  it  had  been  given 

him  b}^  G .     I  told  him  to  turn  it  over  to  a  member  of 

the  Board  of  Delinquents,  and  we  verified  the  bills  with 
the  description  and  numbers  on  the  list  already  made  out. 
I  then  took  the  suspect  to  the  Special  Agent's  office,  where 
we  obtained  a  signed  confession  from  him.  He  was  taken 
before  the  District  Attorney  and  held  for  the  grand  jury. 
The  grand  jury  met  November  11  at  2 :00  P.  M.  and  returned 
an  indictment.  On  Tuesday  morning  he  was  arraigned  be- 
fore the  judge,  pleaded  guilty,  and  was  sentenced  to  Leav- 
enworth penitentiary. ' ' 

Detroit  had  an  interesting  alien  enemy  case  in  that  of 

Fred  G ,  escaped  petty  officer  of  the  Germany  Navy 

who  had  been  working  in  Detroit  for  six  months  under  the 
name  of  Walter  B .  He  was  an  attendant  in  a  sani- 
tarium and  somehow  seemed  a  little  worth  suspicion,  although 
nothing  he  said  could  be  looked  on  as  much  out  of  the  way. 
The  man  who  reported  the  case  was  used  as  a  stool  pigeon. 
At  length  they  met  in  a  hotel  under  the  pretense  of  an  inven- 
tion which  would  be  useful  to  any  one  of  the  nations  in  the 
war.  A  dictaphone  was  put  in  the  room  where  they  were  to 
meet,  and  four  A.  P.  L.  operatives  were  in  the  next  room  at 
the  other  end  of  the  instrument.  There  were  three  such 
meetings,  and  finally  sufficient  evidence  was  secured  to  war- 
rant D.  J.  in  arresting  the  man.  The  final  play  was  made 
the  next  Saturday  night,  when  he  was  arrested  at  the  hotel 
and  locked  up  until  Monday.  This  man  had  first  papers 
issued  to  him  under  the  name  of  Walter  B ,  as  a  Hol- 
lander, and  when  brought  before  D.  J.  on  Monday,  he  main- 
tained  that  he  was  a  Hollander  and  had  left  home  at  an 
early  age  owing  to  brutal  treatment  from  his  father.  After 
one  and  a  half  hours'  w^ork  he  finally  broke  down  and  gave 
up  his  storj^     He  admitted  that  his  real  name  was  Fred 


292  THE  WEB 

G ,  that  he  was  in  the  German  Navj^  and  had  been  on 

the  commerce  raider  Emden  when  that  ship  was  driven  with 
several  others  into  Guam  by  the  Japanese  fleet.  He  was 
taken  sick  and  transferred  to  Mare  Island,  California,  after 
internment.  After  his  recovery  in  California  he  escaped, 
he  said,  by  swimming  the  channel  to  the  mainland.  He  be- 
gan to  beat  his  way  on  frei-ght  trains  to  various  parts  of  the 
country.  He  was  employed  in  New  York  for  a  time  as 
messenger  in  a  bank.  Then  he  drifted  to  Detroit,  worked 
at  various  occupations  in  automobile  factories,  etc.,  and  was 
a  motorman  on  the  street  cars.  This  man  finally  opened  up 
and  gave  the  Department  of  Justice  a  line  of  information 
which,  had  the  war  continued  longer,  would  have  proved  of 
the  greatest  importance.  He  was  ordered  interned  by  the 
United  States  Government.  In  this  case  the  division  was 
able  to  see  the  actual  results  of  its  work.  There  have  been 
many  other  cases  which  might  have  turned  out  as  w^ell  in  the 
denouement,  but  this  one  seemed  to  begin  with  nothing  and 
ended  with  good  and  visible  results. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  STORY  OF  ST.  LOUIS 

How  the  Pro-German  Was  Kept  Mild— Sober  and  Weil- 
Considered  Methods— A  Big  Secret  Code  Puzzle— Business 
As  Usual. 

The  summaries  for  St.  Louis  tell  the  same  story  of  patient 
and  indefatigable  loyalty,  resolved  to  hold  America  strictly 
American.  The  St.  Louis  story  is  modest,  straightforward 
and  convincing.     It  is  given  in  substance  as  written  by  the 

Chief,  Mr.  G.  H.  Walker.  a     'i   q    1Q17 

The  St.  Louis  division  was  organized  on  April  6,  lyi/. 
The  initial  organization  was  composed  of  sixteen  companies, 
organized  each  under  a  captain  and  lieutenants,  divided  into 
professional,  commercial  and  industrial  groups,  so  as  to  em- 
brace all  fields  of  activity.  Only  dependable  and  loyal  men 
were  taken  into  these  companies,  which  ranged  in  size  numer- 
ically from  fifty  to  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  each.  The 
business  and  financial  interests  of  St.  Louis  responded  gen- 
erously to  the  plan  and  made  possible  the  marked  success 
that  always  attended  the  division. 

Captains,  lieutenants  and  operatives  from  the  outset  were 
required  only  to  use  their  eyes  and  ears  and  to  send  in  their 
reports,  through  their  appropriate  superiors,  to  Mr.  G.  H. 
Walker,  the  Chief  of  the  division,  who  in  turn  submitted  such 
reports 'to  the  Special  Agent  in  Charge,  Department  of  Jus- 
tice, at  St.  Louis.  It  became  evident  in  the  summer  months 
of  1917,  from  the  increasing  number  and  variety  of  reports 
sent  in,  that  the  facilities  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation 
were  wholly  inadequate,  and  that  the  investigating  forces  of 
the  Bureau  would  require  enlargement  unless  the  St.  Louis 
Division  of  the  American  Protective  League  itself  undertook 
active  investigation  of  its  reports,  thus  relieving  the  Bureau 
to  that  extent.  It  was  the  same  old  story  of  the  breaking 
down  of  a  most  important  branch  of  the  Government,  and 

293 


.  294  THE  WEB 

the  prompt,  patriotic  rallying  of  our  American  citizens  in 
support. 

The  decision  was  made,  involving  the  opening  of  a  suite 
of  offices  and  the  enrollment  of  a  number  of  competent  vol- 
unteers who  could  give  their  time  to  this  work.  Concur- 
rently with  making  this  decision,  which  meant  so  much 
more  work,  the  St.  Louis  division  undertook  the  formation 
of  a  geographic  organization  distinct  from  the  company  or- 
ganizations, members  of  which  were  not  only  required  to 
report  all  matters  of  interest  through  immediate  superiors, 
but  were  also  called  upon  from  time  to  time  for  auxiliary 
investigation  work  in  their  respective  neighborhoods.  The 
district  organization  embraced  twenty  geographical  divisions 
within  St.  Louis  proper,  there  being  from  twenty-five  to 
fifty  operatives  in  each  division,  all  of  them  responsible  to 
a  deputy  inspector,  who  in  turn  was  responsible  to  an  inspec- 
tor presiding  over  four  districts.  Four  districts  constituted 
a  zone.  St.  Louis  County,  on  the  west,  was  similarly  or- 
ganized, as  were  East  St.  Louis  and  adjoining  towns  and 
villages  in  Illinois.  In  the  summer  of  1918,  East  St.  Louis 
and  considerable  adjacent  territory  were  separated  from  the 
St.  Louis  division  and  created  into  a  distinct  division,  con- 
tinuing, however,  in  close  cooperation  with  the  St.  Louis 
division. 

The  increasing  volume  of  work  out  of  St.  Louis  headquar- 
ters required  the  active  services  of  approximately  fifty  oper- 
atives, most  of  whom  had  abandoned  their  personal  pursuits 
and  were  giving  their  entire  time  to  the  work  of  the  League. 
In  addition,  two  hundred  and  fifty  men  in  the  district  organ- 
ization were  being  called  upon,  more  or  less  regularly,  to 
undertake  active  investigations  with  respect  to  matters  aris- 
ing in  their  respective  neighborhoods.  The  personnel  of 
the  organization  was  made  up  of  loyal  and  self-sacrificing 
citizens  in  all  walks  of  life.  IMuch  excellent  service  was 
rendered  in  investigations  made  at  night  by  those  who  were 
unable  to  devote  other  time  to  the  work.  Each  man  did 
what  he  could. 

Cases  of  intense  and  varying  interest  were  arising  daily  to 
sustain  the  zeal  of  this  large  body  of  volunteers.  One  of 
the  most  interesting  involved  a  letter,  mailed  in  St.  Louis 
March  17,  1917,  to  "  Mr.  W.  Bernkong,  Berlin,  Germany," 


THE  STORY  OF  ST.  LOUIS  295 

which  found  its  way  into  the  St.  Louis  headquarters  and 
which  appeared  to  be  a  code  letter  written  in  Greek  char- 
acters and  words.  An  inspection  of  this,  and  a  close  fol- 
lowing through  of  the  case  in  all  the  hands  it  reached,  will 
give  a  reader  some  idea  of  the  uncanny  sureness  of  the 
United  States  government  experts  in  deciphering  any  sort 
of  blind  communication  that  may  come  before  them. 

The  average  unskilled  person  could  make  little  out  of  the 
original  letter,  which  was  worse  than  Greek.  Interest  in 
this  puzzle  deepened  when  it  was  discovered  that,  although 
written  in  Greek  characters,  Greek  scholars  to  whom  it 
was  submitted  were  unable  to  translate  it.  It  was  ultimately 
sent  to  the  War  College  in  Washington,  that  House  of  Mys- 
tery, which  in  due  time  returned  a  German  translation,  re- 
vealing the  fact  that  Greek  letters  had  been  adapted  to  the 
formation  of  German  words.  It  might  still  have  remained 
possible  for  the  real  secret  of  the  letter  to  have  been  con- 
cealed in  an  unknown  code  —  as  one  may  learn  by  reference 
to  the  brief  mention  of  ciphers  and  codes  in  an  earlier  chap- 
ter (See  ''Arts  of  the  Operatives").  Therefore,  a  first-class 
mystery  stor}',  indeed  the  best  detective  story  of  all  those 
the  League  chiefs  have  sent  in,  still  remains  for  any  wise 
doctor  who  can  solve  it.  It  is  easier  to  write  a  "  detective 
story"  than  it  is  to  read  a  cipher  and  double  code,  because 
a  story-writer  knows  his  own  answer,  whereas  in  the  other 
case,  no  one  knows  the  real  answer. 

This  letter  had  been  stopped  in  transit  in  France  a  few 
days  after  the  entrance  of  the  United  States  into  the  Great 
War.  There  seemed  to  be  some  small  hope  of  finding  a  clue 
to  the  author  through  advertising  it  as  an  undelivered  letter. 
While  this  plan  was  under  contemplation,  however,  a  report 
reached  headquarters,  from  an  operative,  to  the  effect  that 
while  soliciting  Y.  ^I.  C.  A.  subscriptions  in  a  St.  Louis 
office  building  late  at  night,  he  had  surprised  a  citizen  of 
German  origin,  alone  in  his  office,  who  appeared  to  be  at- 
tempting to  decipher  a  letter  with  the  aid  of  two  books,  seem- 
ingly code  books. 

The  letter  was  then  advertised  and  two  operatives  were 
assigned  to  watch  the  appropriate  window  at  the  General 
Post  Office.  After  a  week's  vigil,  the  clerk  in  charge  beck- 
oned to  the  operatives  and  pointed  to  the  retreating  figure 


296  THE  WEB 

of  a  woman  of  small  stature,  almost  wholly  enveloped  in 
a  black  shawl,  and  informed  them  that  she  had  inquired  for 
the  Bemkong  letter.  She  had  said  that  she  was  not  the 
author  but  would  be  glad  to  pay  any  additional  postage  neces- 
sary to  send  it  on  its  way.  In  the  course  of  this  explanation 
the  woman  had  left  the  building  and  was  lost  in  the  crowd 
on  the  street.  It  therefore  became  necessary  to  continue  the 
surveillance  at  the  Post  Office  in  the  hope  of  the  woman's 
return.  Within  a  week  she  did  reappear,  late  in  the  after- 
noon, and  inquired  for  mail  under  the  name  of  a  Catholic 
Sister.  It  was  learned  that  she  had  been  receiving  mail 
under  this  name  for  a  considerable  length  of  time.  She 
was  followed  for  a  number  of  blocks  and  was  seen  to  enter 
a  large  institution  conducted  as  a  girls'  rooming  house. 

A  woman  operative  of  the  St.  Louis  Division,  American 
Protective  League,  that  night,  carrying  a  suit  case,  applied 
at  the  institution  for  a  room,  explaining  that  she  had  just 
arrived  from  a  nearby  city.  She  had  a  detailed  description 
of  the  woman,  but  for  a  period  of  more  than  three  weeks 
she  was  unable  to  find  anybody  in  the  place  fitting  the  de- 
scription. This  woman  operative  was  then  also  assigned  to 
the  Post  Office,  where,  in  due  time,  the  woman  reappeared. 

The  operative  followed  her  to  the  institution,  entering  the 
door  only  a  few  moments  behind  her,  and  saw  her  enter  a 
room  on  the  second  floor.  A  few  minutes  later  the  woman 
operative  was  surprised  to  see  the  suspect  leave  her  room, 
wholly  changed  in  appearance,  the  black  shawl  having  been 
replaced  by  a  dark  sack  suit  and  a  black  sailor  hat.  As  the 
woman  had  that  afternoon  received  a  letter  at  the  Post 
Office,  it  was  suspected  that,  as  a  go-between,  she  would 
deliver  this  letter  to  some  one.  She  left  the  building  and 
boarded  a  street  car.  The  woman  operative  entered  a  wait- 
ing automobile  and  followed.  Again  the  mystery  woman 
proved  too  elusive.  The  next  morning  the  woman  operative 
was  up  and  on  guard  before  daybreak  and  was  enabled  to 
trail  the  woman  to  a  business  establishment,  where,  it  was 
learned,  she  was  employed  in  clerical  work.  She  was  again 
dressed  in  the  sack  suit  and  black  sailor  hat,  and  apparently 
assumed  the  habit  of  a  nun  only  upon  inquiring  at  the  Post 
Office  for  mail. 

The  most  thorough  inquiries  failed  to  reveal  any  addi- 


THE  STORY  OF  ST.  LOUIS  297 

tional  evidence  indicating  this  woman's  connection  with 
enemy  activities,  or  solve  the  dual  character  she  was  imper- 
sonating. It  was  ultimately  determined  to  take  her  to  the 
Bureau,  where  she  might  be  thoroughly  interrogated,  which 
was  done.  Her  explanations  were  simple  but  unsatisfying. 
However,  there  was  no  violation  of  the  law  with  which  she 
could  be  charged,  and  it  was  necessary  to  permit  her  to  go. 
She  moved  to  another  hotel  where  the  St.  Louis  division 
continued  to  keep  her  under  surveillance,  without,  however, 
throwing  any  further  light  upon  the  mysterious  letter.  Other 
apparent  clues  were  likewise  run  down  in  vain. 

The  letter  bears  every  evidence  of  having  been  a  serious 
attempt  to  communicate  information  of  more  or  less  value 
to  the  enemy  and  appears  to  permit  of  further  decoding 
through  the  use  of  some  additional  cipher.  It  is  by  no 
means  sure  that  the  ultimate  code  for  it  will  not  be  found 
by  some  expert  government  man  in  Washington.  The  world 
little  knows  what  marvels  of  unraveling  secrets  is  done  in 
the  Intelligence  work  of  the  Government.  Always  the  battle 
goes  on  between  those  trying  to  make  codes  that  cannot  be 
read  by  an  outsider  and  those  who  say  they  can  master  any 
code  if  given  time.  In  an}^  case,  here  is  a  fine  detective 
story. 

Little  or  no  successful  attempt  was  made  by  St.  Louis 
Division  to  keep  the  organization's  work  a  secret,  and  in 
a  center  so  large,  that  alwaj^s  is  a  moot  question.  In  the 
first  place,  any  large  operations,  like  raids  and  drives  cannot 
be  kept  secret,  and  in  the  second  place,  the  fear  created  by 
the  thought  of  hidden  regulators  has  proved  a  valuable  deter- 
rent, as  has  been  shown  countless  times.  In  any  case,  months 
ago  the  local  press  was  ''playing  up"  the  League  in  many 
stories  that  named  it  very  frankly.  Since  that  is  true,  some 
of  the  anecdotes  collected  may  be  given  here. 

A  St.  Louis  German,  with  the  boa«tfulness  which  fortu- 
nately offsets  much  of  the  cunning  and  industry  of  his 
species,  bragged  to  his  sweetheart  that  he  was  a  member  of 
the  Imperial  German  Secret  Service.  Perhaps  he  showed 
her  the  card  which  German  spies  are  not  supposed  to  show. 
She,  very  proud,  confided  to  a  friend  her  lover's  distinction. 
The  friend  went  to  one  of  the  local  officials  of  the  American 
Protective  League.     She  had  four  brothers  in  the  service. 


298  THE  WEB 

three  in  the  Army  and  one  in  the  Navy,  and  said  that  if 
there  was  a  GeiTQan  spy  in  the  city  the  authorities  should 
know  it.  Unfortunately,  she  had  forgotten  the  man's  name. 
The  man 's  room  was  raided,  and  evidence  was  unearthed  that 
he  was  not  only  an  unregistered  enemy  alien,  but  indeed  a 
German  spy.  In  his  trunk  were  found  firearms  of  the  Ger- 
man army.  He  was  promptly  interned.  Perhaps  no  sweet- 
heart should  have  a  spy,  and  certainly  no  spy  should  have 
a  sweetheart. 

A  German  who  predicted  the  defeat  of  the  Allies  before  the 
United  States  entered  the  war,  persisted  in  his  harangues 
afterwards,  until  a  League  operative  went  to  the  bank  where 
he  worked.  The  man's  dismissal  resulted.  He  continued 
at  times  to  return  to  the  bank,  assailing  some  of  the  young 
women  clerks  with  abuse  and  threats  because  of  their  loyalty 
to  America.  He  was  arrested  for  violating  his  zone  permit, 
which  the  United  States  Marshal  had  revoked  when  the 
bank's  notice  of  his  dismissal  was  filed.  Later  he  was  in- 
terned. 

One  night  a  party  from  the  Naval  recruiting  office  in  St. 
Louis  w^as  seeking  enlistments  at  a  West  End  theater.  ]\Iov- 
ing  pictures  were  thrown  on  a  screen  and  an  officer  made  a 
speech,  in  which  he  declared:  "  The  Germans  went  through 
Belgium  and  France  like  barbarians. "  A  stout,  well-dressed 
man  in  the  audience  exploded :  ' '  That 's  a  damned  lie !  " 
Two  sailors  with  revolvers  sprang  for  him  over  the  foot- 
lights, but  the  first  to  reach  him  were  two  members  of  the 
League,  w^ho,  although  they  had  gone  to  the  theater  only  for 
amusement,  had  not  forgotten  their  duties.  After  a  sharp 
tussle  the  disturber  w^as  overpowered.  He  protested  indig- 
nantly that  he  was  an  American  citizen,  but  refused  stub- 
bornly to  give  any  other  information  about  himself.  Borrow- 
ing an  automobile,  the  League  operatives  and  sailors  took 
him  to  a  police  station  and  notified  the  Federal  authorities. 
Search  of  the  prisoner 's  effects  showed  that  he  was  an  unnat- 
uralized German  subject,  though  he  had  lived  in  the  United 
States  for  fourteen  years.  He  was  interned  for  the  dura- 
tion of  the  war.  Of  such  is  the  glorious  Kingdom  of 
Deutschland. 

A  client  went  to  the  office  of  his  attorney,  and  after  their 
business  was  concluded,   tarried  for  a   chat,   in  which  he 


THE  STORY  OF  ST.  LOUIS  299 

dropped  the  information  that  he  had  heard  a  pro-German 
sa}^:  "  Ever>^  American  child  should  have  its  neck  wrung 
as  soon  as  it  is  born.  The  German  army  could  rule  the 
United  States  better  than  Wilson  —  and  it  will,  too. ' '  The 
lawyer  obtained  from  him  the  name  and  address  of  the  of- 
fender, and  the  names  of  witnesses  who  heard  his  remarks. 
After  the  client  had  gone,  the  attorney,  being  a  member  of 
the  League,  made  out  a  report  on  a  blank  form  supplied 
by  the  Department  of  Justice,  and  sent  it  to  the  Captain  of 
his  company,  signing  it  with  his  number.  The  lawyer's 
dut.y  ended  here,  for  he  belonged  to  one  of  the  occupational 
units  and  was  pledged  to  give  information  but  not  to  investi- 
gate. The  Captain  took  the  report  to  League  headquarters, 
where  the  officials  approved  it  and  sent  it  to  the  local  office 
of  the  Department  of  Justice,  Bureau  of  Information.  It 
was  0.  K.  'd  there  as  a  matter  worth  looking  into,  whereupon 
the  League  called  upon  its  other  arm,  the  investigators,  /jfhey  ^, 
went  out  to  obtain  affidavits  to  corroborate  the  hearsggrv  in- 
formation first  turned  in  by  the  lawyer.  In  this  roundaboirt^ 
way  was  secured  evidence  to  be  placed  before  the  Atti^jJKIIjj^,* 
General.  You  can  never  tell,  even  if  you  are  a  pro-Geraiah 
and  have  to  spill  over,  when  you  are  also  going  to  spill,  upset 
or  overturn  the  legumes  known  in  common  parlance  as  the 
beans. 

A  naturalization  department  was  organized  on  the  initia- 
tive of  the  St.  Louis  office,  which  was  followed  in  other 
divisions.  On  May  18,  Congress  repealed  the  law  prohib- 
iting the  naturalization  of  aliens  if  they  had  filed  declara- 
tions of  intention  not  less  than  two  or  more  than  seven 
years  before  the  United  States  entered  the  war.  That  is, 
citizenship  was  possible  under  these  conditions,  providing  the 
applicant  established  his  good  moral  character,  his  attach- 
ment to  the  Constitution,  his  belief  in  organized  govern- 
ment, his  ability  to  speak  English  and  the  genuineness  of 
his  wish  to  become  a  citizen  and  renounce  forever  all  alle- 
giance to  any  foreign  Power.  About  eight  hundred  persons 
in  the  St.  Louis  district,  according  to  local  press  data,  sought 
to  avail  themselves  of  the  opportunity  provided  by  the  new 
law.  Their  applications  called  for  a  thorough  investigation 
in  each  case.  This  work  the  League  volunteered  to  take  off 
the  shoulders  of  the  Bureau  of  Naturalization.     The  inquiries 


*^«, 


300 


THE  WEB 


put  in  the  questionnaire  are  interesting  as  official  tests  of 
loyalty.     The  most  important  of  them  are  as  follows : 

Has  applicant  affiliated  himself  directly  or  indirectly  with 
any  organization  or  propaganda  in  any  way  opposed  to  the 
position  taken  by  the  United  States  in  regard  to  the  war,  or 
with  known  or  suspected  agents  of  the  enemy? 

Has  applicant  at  any  time  expressed  his  approval  of  (a)  the 
invasion  of  France  and  Belgium?  (b)  the  sinking  of  the 
Lusitania?  and  (c)  the  general  conduct  of  the  war  by  Ger- 
many?    If  so,  when,  where  and  in  whose  hearing? 

Has  applicant  been  opposed  to  (a)  the  United  States'  entry 
-  inte^the  war?  (b)  acts  of  the  United  States  in  conducting  the 
Wat  Jc)  shipping  munitions  to  France  and  England?  (d)  the 
drafts  \e)  Liirerty  loans? 

Can , all  th'6  foreign-born  or  foreign-descended  citizens  of 
the  United  States  swear  before  God  that  they  are  fit  to  gain 
ror  to  retain  their  citizenship  under  a  test  like  that  ? 
'"■''[A.  St.  Louis  journal,  in  commenting  on  the  work  of  the 
AmericflU;  jppo^ective  League  in  that  city,  gave  a  rather  inter- 
esting summalry  of  the  growth  of  the  espionage  idea  in  the 
United  States,  for  which  place  not  inappropriately  may  be 
found  here. 


The  dangers  that  hung  upon  the  flanks  of  the  nation,  the 
adroit  moves  of  detective  forces  which  set  at  naught  the 
plotters,  and  the  manner  and  means  adopted  to  nip  in  the 
bud  the  creeping  plans  of  Pan-Germanism,  is  one  of  the  most 
fascinating  and  in  many  respects  one  of  the  most  thrilling 
chapters  in  the  recital  of  America's  first  months  in  the  great 
war. 

Previous  to  the  Civil  War,  the  United  States  had  no  secret 
service.  It  came  into  being  when  reports  were  brought  to 
Samuel  H.  Felton,  president  of  the  Philadelphia,  Wilmington 
and  Baltimore  Railroad,  that  President  Lincoln  would  be 
assassinated  while  traveling  by  special  train  from  the  West 
to  his  inaugural  at  Washington.  Felton  sent  for  Allan 
Pinkerton,  who  was  then  conducting  a  small  detective  agency 
in  Chicago.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Pinkerton,  in  taking 
the  task  of  protecting  Lincoln's  life,  outlined  the  method  which 
is  the  keynote  of  the  secret  service  system.  In  describing  the 
work  he  wrote:  "I  resolved  to  locate  my  men  at  the  various 
towns  along  the  road  where  It  was  believed  dissatisfaction 
existed.     I  sent  the  men  to  their  posts  with  instructions  to 


THE  STORY  OF  ST.  LOUIS  3OI 

become  acquainted  with  such  men  as  they  might,  on  observa- 
tion, consider  suspicious,  and  endeavor  to  obtain  from  them, 
by  association,  a  knowledge  of  their  intentions."  Later, 
Pinkerton,  under  the  name  of  "Maj.  E.  J.  Allen,"  directed  the 
intelligence  department  of  Gen.  McClellan's  Ohio  army. 

Brig.  Gen.  Lafayette  C.  Baker  was  the  organizer  of  the 
military  secret  service  that  performed  the  detective  duty  of 
the  Civil  War.  At  the  outbreak  of  hostilities,  a  national 
detective  bureau  was  an  idea  entirely  new,  and  was  regarded 
as  contrary  to  republican  institutions.  The  service  went  out 
of  existence  with  the  close  of  the  war. 

The  present  day  Secret  Service,  proper,  is  a  division  of  the 
Treasury  Department.  It  was  created  at  the  time  "shin 
plasters"  were  in  existence  and  counterfeiting  thereof  had 
become  general.  Its  duty  at  the  outset  was  to  run  down  coun- 
terfeiters, but  later  its  duties  were  somewhat  broadened,  and 
in  recent  years  it  has  been  intrusted  with  the  safety  of  the 
President. 

In  April  of  this  year,  the  United  States  had  at  its  command 
(besides  M.  I.  D.  and  Naval  Intelligence)  the  Secret  Service, 
the  investigators  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  the  Immigra- 
tion Bureau  inspectors  and  the  inspectors  of  the  Post  Office 
Department.  These  organizations  for  the  detention  of  crim- 
inals are  now  working  in  close  harmony  against  the  common 
enemy. 

With  these  agencies  also  worked  the  American  Protective 
League,  regarding  which  this  comment  was  printed  and 
should  be  reprinted : 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  American  business 
men  who  conceived  the  plan  and  who  to-day  constitute  the 
myriad  meshes  in  the  spy  net  cast  over  America,  have  accom- 
plished a  feat  which,  for  efficiency,  for  secrecy,  for  loyalty  and 
patriotism  has  never  been  equaled  or  approached  by  the  men 
of  any  nation  since  time  began. 

The  St.  Louis  division  embraced  a  membership  of  3.000 
operatives,  the  large  majority  of  whom  made  up  the  listen- 
ing and  reporting  organization.  The  number  and  variety  of 
cases  developed  and  investigated  are  as  follows :  Alien  enemy 
activities.  225 ;  Espionage  Act  eases,  1,142 ;  sabotage,  11 ; 
anti-military  activities,  15 ;  printed  propaganda,  1,741 ;  I.  W. 
W.,  including  pacifism,  48;  briber^-,  graft,  etc.,  45;  imper- 
sonation,   2;    naturalization,    600;    counter-espionage,    53; 


302  THE  WEB 

draft  cases,  7,075 ;  character  and  loyalty  investigations,  589 ; 
liquor  cases,  49  ;  vice,  26 ;  wireless  cases,  52 ;  profiteering,  80 ; 
miscellaneous,  256. 

The  credit  for  the  patient  and  self-sacrificing  labors  re- 
quired in  this  large  volume  of  work  is  due  not  only  to  the 
patriotism  and  fidelity  of  the  listening  and  reporting  force 
and  to  those  operatives  who  devoted  their  time  to  w^ork  of 
investigation,  but  also  to  conscientious  cooperation  of  the 
district  organizations  and  their  deputies  and  inspectors.  Shar- 
ing with  these  must  be  remembered,  on  the  silent  roll  of 
honor,  all  those  deputy  chiefs  in  charge  of  the  respective 
departments  at  headquarters  under  the  immediate  direction 
of  their  Chief,  who  must  stand  for  all. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  STORY  OF  KANSAS  CITY 

The  Gate  City  of  the  Great  West  in  the  War— If  K.  C. 
Ever  was  Wild  and  Woolly,  That  was  Long  Ago — Let  Us 
Have  Peace,  if  We  Have  to  Get  It  With  a  Gun— All  Quiet 
Along  the  Missouri. 

Kansas  City  claims  and  has  claimed  for  a  long  time  the 
title  of  Gate  City  to  the  Great  West.  This  is  hers  by  legit- 
imate right  and  has  been  ever  since  wheel-power  first  went 
west  of  the  Missouri  River.  Independence,  Missouri,  which 
we  may  call  the  mother  of  the  modern  Kansas  City,  was  for 
years,  early  in  the  last  centurj^  the  jumping-off  place  for 
all  the  great  western  transcontinental  trails.  That  way  lay 
Oregon,  on  the  upper  fork.  The  left  fork  of  the  main  trav- 
eled road  led  to  Santa  Fe.  The  men  bound  for  the  Arkansas 
Valley  passed  by  here,  and  the  old  fur  hunters  said  good-bye 
to  civilization  at  this  point  even  before  the  wagon  had  re- 
placed the  pack  saddle  on  the  Santa  Fe  trail.  Here  began 
the  wagon-road  that  later  was  railroad,  and  all  the  time,  from 
the  wildest  to  the  tamest  days,  whether  in  staid  1842,  or  in 
wild  1882,  Kansas  City  was  the  Gate  of  the  West,  letting  in 
and  passing  out  a  wild  and  tempestuous  life  in  the  days  of 
the  Homeric  West. 

Time  was  when  Kansas  City  was  bad,  and  had  her  man 
for  breakfast  with  the  best  of  them.  But  always  the  worst 
w^as  farther  West,  and  Kansas  City  sat  tight.  She  did  not 
care  for  the  movies  of  the  future,  but  quickly  went  in  for 
law,  order  and  business.  So  she  has  grown  up,  by  very 
virtue  of  her  geography,  her  situation,  and  her  history,  into 
an  immense  commercial  center,  solid,  law-abiding  and  pros- 
perous. 

There  was  no  reason  to  expect  any  great  outbreaks  of  vio- 
lence in  Kansas  City  at  this  date  of  her  history,  nor  do  we 
find  any ;  but  the  A.  P.  L.  was  there  as  it  has  been  in  every 

303 


304  THE  WEB 

other  great  city  of  the  Union  throughout  the  war.  That  it 
was  active  may  be  seen  by  a  glance  at  the  totals.  In  D.  J. 
work,  forty-five  cases  of  alien  enemy  activities,  1,237  cases 
of  disloyalty  and  sedition,  and  eight  cases  of  propaganda 
cover  the  list.  The  War  Department  offered  more  work,  the 
selective  draft  alone  involving  under  its  several  heads  3,182 
cases.  There  were  410  investigations  connected  with  char- 
acter and  loyalty ;  227  cases  of  investigation  of  civilian  appli- 
cants for  overseas  service.  Raids  to  obtain  evidence  for 
illegal  sale  of  liquor  to  soldiers  brought  visits  to  fifty-three 
doubtful  saloons,  and  twenty-five  convictions  of  violators. 
Kansas  City  is  dry,  so  far  as  the  Army  is  concerned,  as  may 
be  witnessed  by  an  editorial  of  September  17,  1918,  in  the 
Kansas  City  Star  —  which  also  shows  why  it  is  dry : 

The  sale  of  liquor  to  soldiers  has  been  going  on  in  Kansas 
City  for  months.  OflScers  at  Leavenworth  and  Funston  have 
complained  of  it.  The  consequences  have  been  apparent  to 
everybody.  Yet  the  police — Governor  Gardner's  police — did 
nothing.  It  took  a  voluntary  organization  to  get  the  evidence 
and  force  the  arrests.  The  law-breakers  whom  the  police — 
Governor  Gardner's  police — could  not  find,  were  run  down  by 
the  volunteers  of  the  American  Protective  League.  They 
discovered  the  most  open  and  flagrant  violation  of  the  law.  It 
was  no  trick  for  amateurs  to  get  evidence  and  find  the  people 
who  deserved  arrest. 

A  tough  North-end  colored  saloon  was  visited  by  A.  P.  L. 
operatives  late  one  Saturday  evening.  A  large  crowd  was 
encountered.  Most  of  them  had  been  drinking  heavily  and 
were  in  rather  a  noisy  condition.  The  A.  P.  L.  men  first 
encountered  a  large  colored  fellow.  He  explained  that  he 
was  past  the  age,  but  that  he  had  served  in  the  21st  Kansas 
(colored)  in  the  Spanish  War,  and  produced  his  papers  to 
prove  his  assertion.  A  colored  fellow  was  encountered  who 
refused  to  show  his  card.  He  said  he  had  one,  but  stated 
he  would  not  go  to  headquarters  and  that  it  would  take  a 
fight  to  get  him  there.  Whereupon  this  ex-colored  soldier 
stepped  up  and  informed  him  that  if  there  was  to  be  any 
threshing  done,  he  asked  the  first  opportunity,  and  that  no.  2 
would  show  his  card  or  he  would  take  it  off  him.  He  was 
supported  by  two  or  three  other  colored  men,  with  the  result 


THE  STORY  OF  KANSAS  CITY  305 

that  every  man  in  the  crowd  brought  out  his  card.  This 
story  is  given  to  illustrate  one  fact  —  no  matter  how  tough 
and  disorderly  the  crowd,  eighty-five  percent  at  least  still 
had  manhood  enough  left  to  be  loyal. 

In  another  saloon  a  big  fellow  was  leaning  on  the  bar. 
He  was  notified  that  operatives  outside  were  looking  at  the 
cards,  and  he  said :  "  I  have  my  little  old  card  right  here, ' ' 
slapping  his  breast,  *'  but  the  man  w^ho  sees  it  will  first 

have  to  walk  over  my  dead  body. ' '     Operative  B ,  who 

had  entered  the  saloon  a  few  minutes  before,  was  leaning 
on  the  bar  facing  the  fellow  and  when  he  finished  his  tirade, 
he  said  quietly  and  very  low:  "  Let  me  see  your  card, 
please;  I  am  from  the  American  Protective  League" — and 
he  showed  his  star.  Instantly  the  fellow  replied:  **  Oh, 
certainly,  here  it  is  ' ' —  accompanied  by  a  roar  of  laughter 
from  everybody  in  the  saloon. 

A  man  was  reported  by  neighbors  as  having  taken  down  a 
flag  that  was  put  on  his  house.  It  was  said  that  he  read 
the  reports  of  German  victories  in  the  early  part  of  the  war 
on  the  front  porch  to  the  neighbors  and  gloated  over  them. 
He  also  said  he  knew  how  far  to  go,  what  to  say  and  when 
to  quit.  A.  P.  L.  operatives  had  a  quiet  interview  with  this 
party.  He  was  well  educated,  held  a  good  position,  and 
was  desirous  of  arguing  the  question.  At  that  moment  he 
was  reinforced  by  his  wife,  who  immediately  ordered  the 
operatives  out  of  the  house,  with  the  statement  that  no  one 
could  accuse  her  husband  of  being  disloyal.  She  was  very 
determined  and  unusually  long  of  wind.  His  change  was 
immediate.  He  took  his  wife  to  a  back  room.  Evidently  he 
runs  the  house,  for  she  did  not  reappear.  He  assured  us 
he  had  made  a  mistake,  and,  in  fact,  termed  himself  a  plain 
d d  fool.  He  promised  to  be  loyal  and  said  that  he  in- 
vited checking  up. 

It  was  the  experience  of  the  Eastern  District  of  Kansas 
City  that  about  twenty  percent  were  American-born  citizens 
of  German  descent,  or  naturalized  Germans  who  looked  upon 
the  war  as  simply  a  question  of  taking  sides,  instead  of  a 
question  of  loyalty.  A.  P.  L.  pointed  out  to  these  the  need 
of  being  loyal,  what  they  owed  this  country,  why  they  should 
be  subservient  to  the  law  —  and  what  was  going  to  happen 
to  them  if  they  were  not.     This  twenty  percent  either  was 


306  THE  WEB 

made  into  good  citizens  or  it  remained  a  class  of  people  who 
said  nothing  and  did  no  harm.  The  five  percent  of  bad 
stuff  represented  the  actual  Germans  who  were  interested 
in  the  success  of  the  Germans,  and  the  slackers,  deserters 
and  men  who  had  violated  the  law  and  had  to  be  appre- 
hended. 

A  typical  Kansas  City  case  was  commented  on  in  the  "Spy 
Glass, ' '  the  national  A.  P.  L.  paper : 

Fred  W.  S was  born  on  March  29,  1888,  entered  mili- 
tary service  in  Crefeld,  Germany,  October  15,  1909,  in  the  53rd 
Infantry  Regiment  of  the  5th  Westphalian  Division,  Co.  6, 
and  received  his  discharge  on  September  25,  1911.  His  mili- 
tary book  in  addition  to  giving  his  record  as  first-class  marks- 
man, shows  that  he  was  recommended  for  corporal.  In  April, 
1913,  he  secured  a  furlough  to  North  America,  but  was  subject 
to  call  in  March,  1915.     Claims  he  came  to  this  country  to 

visit  his  brother.    Interviewed,  S was  frank.    He  stated 

that  he  made  it  a  rule  never  to  talk,  but  that  prior  to  the 
United  States  entering  the  war,  he  had  let  some  remarks 
slip  to  his  fellow  workmen,  which  he  had  regretted,  as  these 
remarks  had  caused  him  a  great  deal  of  trouble  since  then. 
He  showed  us  his  registration  card.  He  stated  that  he  had 
applied  for  his  first  papers  and  that  he  was  ready  and  willing 
to  take  out  his  last  papers  the  moment  he  was  permitted,  and 
that  he  wanted  to  become  an  American  citizen.  He  had  four 
brothers  in  the  German  Army,  and  has  not  heard  from  them 
for  three  years.  This  was  given  as  an  explanation  for  his 
mistake  in  making  a  few  remarks  at  the  beginning  of  the  war. 
He  asserted  that  he  would  live  up  faithfully  to  every  rule, 
would  attend  strictly  to  his  business  and  would  report  when- 
ever desired.  He  declared  that  he  had  bought  First,  Second 
and  Third  Liberty  Loan  Bonds.  He  also  stated  that  he  had 
given  to  the  Red  Cross.  Conclusion:  He  has  violated  no 
law  and  do  not  believe  he  intends  to  violate  any.  Kept  under 
observation. 

Here  is  another  story  which  illustrates  that  curious  psycho- 
logical bluntness  and  one-sidedness  of  the  German  intellect. 

The  widow  of  Fred  E ,  deceased,  -who  had  a  drug  store, 

was  asked  for  a  subscription  to  the  hospital  fund.  She  said : 
"  I  won't  give  any  money  to  the  Research  Hospital,  but 
maybe,  if  you  take  the  old  name  back,  I  will  give  to  the 
German  Hospital,  but  not  to  the  Research  Hospital. ' ' 


THE  STORY  OF  KANSAS  CITY  307 

The  manner  in  which  she  said  this  and  the  spirit  demon- 
strated by  her  attitude  showed  that  she  was  thoroughly  pro- 
German.  Operative  No.  60  called  on  the  party,  and  says  in 
his  report : 

We  charged  her  with  disloyal  talking.  She  stated  that  she 
had  done  no  disloyal  talking,  and  in  fact  had  taken  good 
care  not  to  talk  against  the  Government  in  any  way;  further- 
more, that  she  had  a  son  in  France  and  if  she  was  against 
the  Government  she  certainly  would  not  have  allowed  him 
to  go.  We  then  asked  her  about  her  statements  regarding 
the  Research  Hospital.  She  stated  she  had  spoken  to  her 
lawyer  about  it  and  he  had  told  her  it  was  not  so  necessary 
to  change  the  name  of  the  Hospital  as  it  would  be  to  change 
the  name  of  a  business.  She  thought  the  name  should  remain 
"German"  because  the  Germans  had  in  the  beginning  founded 
the  Hospital.  We  stated  that  there  were  no  Germans  over 
here  to  found  it.  "Well,"  she  said,  "I  mean  German-Amer- 
icans." We  then  stated  there  were  no  German-Americans 
here,  either,  but  all  Americans.  She  began  crying  and  said 
that  no  one  could  understand  her  position,  that  she  had  sis- 
ters in  Germany  and  nephews  fighting  in  that  Army,  while 
her  own  son  was  in  the  American  Army  fighting  against  them. 
She  stated  that  the  dirty  stories  about  the  German  army  were 
all  lies.  We  told  her  that  it  was  our  duty  to  demand  that 
she  should  not  do  any  talking.  We  were  convinced  that  she 
is  very  pro-German  and  that  the  only  way  to  prevent  her  from 
talking  would  be  to  put  her  where  there  are  no  other  people 
except  Germans. 

This  is  a  very  fair  statement  of  one  of  the  greatest  prob- 
lems of  America  today.  What  shall  be  done  with  the  hy- 
phen ?     It  must  go,  else  this  war  will  be  fought  again. 

While  the  war  was  yet  young,  a  tip  was  received  from  the 
draft  board  that  a  certain  young  man  had  failed  to  appear 
when  called.  Investigation  showed  that  he  had  deserted 
his  wife,  leaving  her  in  a  destitute  condition.  He  had  three 
sisters  in  the  city,  consequently  A.  P.  L.  assumed  he  would 
at  some  time  communicate  with  one  of  them.  By  certain 
means,  operatives  established  a  watch  on  the  mail  as  it  was 
delivered,  locating  him  at  different  times  in  Oklahoma,  Colo- 
rado, Arizona  and  other  western  points.  One  day  a  tele- 
phone call  was  received  stating  that  one  of  the  sisters  had 
been  heard  to  converse  with  him  over  the  'phone;  that  he 


308  THE  WEB 

had  arrived  in  town  at  2 :30,  and  at  4 :00  would  be  at  a  cer- 
tain place  to  visit  a  sister.  A.  P.  L.  men  arrived  at  that 
place.  In  a  few  minutes  a  man  of  the  draft-evader 's  descrip- 
tion, wearing  a  cowboy  hat  and  typical  cowboy  attire,  came 
swaggering  up  the  steps.  When  taken,  he  put  up  a  some- 
what original  and  unique  story: 

You  see,  I  am  hard  of  hearing  and  have  a  bad  heart.  I  am 
not  at  all  yellow.  I  am  ready  to  fight  at  any  time,  and  have 
always  been  ready,  but  it  occurred  to  me  that  as  I  could  not 
fight  on  account  of  my  hearing  and  bad  heart,  I  ought  not 
put  the  officials  to  the  trouble  of  examining  me.  You  see,  it 
would  take  a  lot  of  time  to  examine  me,  so  I  thought  the  best 
plan  was  just  to  save  them  that  trouble,  and  as  I  was  going 
west  anyway,  etc. 

Operatives  then  locked  the  cowboy  up  for  the  night,  and 
the  next  morning  took  him  before  the  Department  of  Justice. 
He  was  very  repentant,  and  while  adhering  to  the  same 
story,  was  anxious  that  something  should  be  done  to  keep 
him  out  of  the  Army.  This  matter  was  explained  quietly 
to  the  Department  man  who  met  him,  and  upon  being  advised 
by  the  cowboy  that  he  was  hard  of  hearing,  had  a  bad  heart, 
etc.,  the  latter  said:  "  I  feel  awfully  sorry  for  you,  but 
you  see,  you  are  delinquent.  You  have  laid  yourself  liable 
to  the  law  and  a  penitentiary  offense.  Now,  we  usually  are 
considerate  and  give  a  man  a  chance  of  going  to  war,  but 
you  tell  me  you  are  hard  of  hearing  and  have  a  bad  heart, 
and  of  course,  under  those  circumstances,  we  cannot  send 
you  to  the  Army.  That  is  too  bad,  and  I  suppose  the  de- 
cision of  the  court  will  be  that  it  is  the  penitentiary  for  you.  ' ' 

A  very  pale,  excited  listener  immediately  said:  ^'  Mister, 
now  I  think  you  misunderstand  me.  A  man  who  goes 
through  w^hat  I  went  through  yesterday,  being  arrested  and 
being  locked  up  with  a  lot  of  bedbugs  all  night,  has  a  fairly 
good  heart.  In  fact,  I  believe  I  have  entirely  recovered  my 
hearing,  and  am  all  over  the  heart  trouble.  If  you  will  only 
let  me  go  to  the  Army,  I  will  waive  all  examination. ''  He 
went. 

In  one  day  A.  P.  L.  received  three  different  complaints 
that  a  spy  was  working  in  the  north-eastern  part  of  the  city. 
He  was  supposed  to  be  German  through  and  through,  though 


THE  STORY  OF  KANSAS  CITY  309 

he  had  never  said  anything  pro- German.  He  was  generally 
considered  to  be  a  wise  fellow  who  worked  and  did  not  talk. 
Every  Saturday  night  he  met  a  bunch  of  spies  in  his  base- 
ment, one  tall  and  one  short,  both  dangerous  looking.  They 
always  carried  a  secret  basket  of  mysterious  contents. 
Neighbors  were  very  much  aroused.  Insisted  that  the  De- 
partment do  something,  quick.  A.  P.  L.  placed  operatives 
on  a  Saturday  night,  the  night  on  which  these  mysterious 
meetings  all  occurred,  and  watched  the  long  and  short  men 
come  with  their  deadly  baskets.  Shortly  after,  a  light  ap- 
peared in  the  basement.  Curtains  were  at  the  windows  and 
the  windows  were  up,  so  the  operatives  crawled  up  closely  and 
quietly  and  listened  to  the  conversation,  which  was  about  as 
follows,  in  mixed  German :  ''  I  played  the  ace."  ''  No,  you 
didn't,  you  led  with  a  king!  "  "  You  don't  know  anything 
about  playing  pinochle."  And  so  forth.  S'nuf,  Mawruss. 
The  mysterious  basket  contained  beer  bottles ! 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  STORY  OF  MINNEAPOLIS 

Clean-Cut  Work  of  One  of  the  North-West's  Capitals — 
Straightaway  Story  of  a  Good  Division — Many  Anecdotes 
Sho^Ying  How  Operatives  Worked — The  Dignified  and 
Sober  Side  of  Saving  the  State  and  Making  Over  Citizens — 
A  Model  Report. 

The  great  city  of  Minneapolis  is  one  of  the  foci  of  the 
agricultural  and  industrial  realm  of  the  vast  Northwestern 
country  for  which  the  Twin  Cities  make  the  gateway. 
It  was  not  to  be  supposed  that  its  staid  and  sober  popula- 
tion would  cause  any  great  amount  of  trouble.  None  the 
less,  trouble  did  develop  in  Minneapolis  as  elsewhere,  and 
A.  P.  L.  cases  and  figures  mounted  steadily  upward,  just  as 
they  did  in  other  large  centers  of  industry  the  country  over. 

Alien  enemy  cases  for  the  Department  of  Justice  ran 
127;  disloyalty  and  sedition,  1,222;  sabotage,  17;  inter- 
ference with  draft,  44;  propaganda,  392;  I.  W.  W.  and 
other  radicals,  70.  War  Department  cases  had  5,725 
investigations  under  the  selective  draft :  997  slackers ;  507 
work-or-fight  cases;  character  and  loyalty,  337  cases; 
liquor,  vice  and  prostitution,  593  cases.  The  Treasury 
Department  had  1,129  cases  on  war  risk  and  allowance 
grounds.  The  Fuel  Administration  turned  over  2,356  cases 
for  investigation ;  the  gasoline  work,  427.  The  grand  total 
of  cases  handled  by  Minneapolis  division  men,  November 
26,  1917,  to  December  16,  1918,  was  15,415. 

Minneapolis  had  a  very  thorough  organization,  and  has 
reported  the  results  in  so  thorough  and  explicit  a  fashion 
as  to  leave  small  option  in  matter  of  handling  the  report. 
It  could  not  well  be  amended  or  improved  upon,  and  is 
given  in  substance  in  the  following  pages. 

Entries   on  the   case   cards   include    every   conceivable 

310 


THE  STORY  OF  MINNEAPOLIS  311 

offense  against  the  wartime  laws  and  orders  of  the  Fed- 
eral Government.  Each  card  contains  the  condense-d  his- 
tory of  an  investigation  important  in  the  prosecution  of 
the  war,  and,  collectively,  the  15,415  cards  represent 
uncountable  hours,  days  and  nights  of  devoted  service  to 
the  Government  during  a  period  of  thirteen  months.  They 
record  adventures  as  thrilling  as  any  of  the  detective 
stories  of  Monsieur  Lecocq  or  Sherlock  Holmes,  although 
these  form  a  minority  of  the  experiences  encountered. 

The  Minneapolis  Division  of  the  American  Protective 
League  entered  upon  active  service  November  27,  1917. 
An  organization  with  a  limited  membership  had  been 
effected  in  Minneapolis  previously,  but  its  members  served 
principally  as  observers,  and  it  was  not  until  Charles  G. 
Davis,  a  Minneapolis  contractor,  had  been  induced  by 
H.  M.  Gardner,  Vice-President  of  the  Civic  &  Commerce 
Association,  in  charge  of  war  activities,  to  accept  the  posi- 
tion as  Chief  of  the  Minneapolis  Division,  that  the  Amer- 
ican Protective  League  became  an  active  local  agent  for 
the  apprehension  of  anti-war  activities.  Mr.  Davis  entirely 
abandoned  his  private  business  to  enter  upon  this  impor- 
tant Government  service.  After  having  established  rela- 
tions with  Mr.  T.  E.  Campbell,  Chief  Special  Agent  in 
charge  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  U.  S.  Department 
of  Justice  in  the  Northwest,  he  opened  headquarters  and 
immediately  began  recruiting  a  force  of  operatives.  He 
continued  in  this  position  through  the  thirteen  months 
without  salary. 

Under  the  plan  of  organization,  a  captain  was  appointed 
in  each  district  and  operatives  assigned  in  the  numbers 
required  to  meet  the  conditions  encountered.  Lieutenants 
also  were  provided,  each  having  charge  of  groups  of  opera- 
tives up  to  ten  men.  Headquarters  held  each  captain 
responsible  for  all  operations  in  his  district. 

The  jurisdiction  of  the  Minneapolis  Division  extended 
throughout  Hennepin  County.  In  the  principal  county 
centers  outside  of  Minneapolis,  special  operatives  were 
appointed  to  take  instruction  direct  from  headquarters. 
Another  group  of  picked  operatives  composed  a  headquar- 
ters squad  operated  directly  under  the  chief  and  handling 
emergency  cases. 


312  THE  WEB 

Because  of  the  importance  and  confidential  nature  of 
the  business  entrusted  to  the  League,  extreme  care  was 
exercised  in  the  selection  of  the  operatives.  They  were 
men  of  proved  loyalty  as  well  as  of  ability  and  influence. 
As  the  work  of  the  division  increased,  the  personnel  was 
enlarged  until  a  total  of  more  than  four  hundred  operatives 
from  all  lines  of  business,  trades  and  professions  had 
finally  been  called  to  service.  All  served  without  pay  or 
expense  allowances.  Some  of  them  gave  practically  their 
entire  time  to  the  work  of  the  League.  Most  of  them  defi- 
nitely pledged  and  gave  from  six  to  twenty  hours  of  serv- 
ice every  week. 

The  total  members  sworn  in  numbered  491  on  November 
30,  1918.  The  active  list  at  that  date  included  326  officers 
and  operatives  and  sixty  members  of  the  so-called  **Eye 
and  Ear'*  division,  consisting  of  men  not  able  to  render 
continuous  service,  but  so  situated  that  they  were  in  a 
position  to  communicate  to  headquarters  reports  of  anti- 
American  activities  and  other  Federal  offenses.  Among 
the  active  members  were  scores  who  had  tried  in  vain  to 
enter  the  Army  or  Navy,  and)  who,  failing  to  find  any 
other  essential  war  service  open  to  them,  found  an  outlet 
for  their  patriotic  energy  in  the  ranks  of  the  American 
Protective  League.  Notwithstanding  this,  the  League 
report  shows  that  twenty-four  members  resigned  during 
the  thirteen  months  to  go  into  the  army;  five  to  enter  the 
overseas  service  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  or  Ked  Cross;  and 
eighteen  to  accept  other  Government  service. 

In  the  pursuit  of  their  duties,  operatives  and  officials 
of  the  Minneapolis  Division,  A.  P.  L.,  arrested  several  well- 
known  criminals,  and  encountered  scores  of  desperate 
offenders  of  various  kinds.  It  is  a  tribute  to  their  courage 
and  efficiency  that  there  was  not  a  single  case  of  extreme 
violence.  Men  who  were  recognized  everywhere  as  dan- 
gerous were  apprehended  as  easily  as  persons  who  had 
offended  unwittingly.  In  its  work,  the  League  employed 
all  of  the  scientific  as  well  as  the  ordinary  devices  utilized 
in  the  detection  and  conviction  of  violators  and  evaders 
of  the  law.  Dictaphones  and  disguises  were  used,  and 
miles  were  covered  and  hours  spent  in  skillful  '*  shadow- 
ing.'' 


THE  STORY  OF  MINNEAPOLIS  313 

While  the  files  of  the  Minneapolis  Division  contain  rec- 
ords of  many  cases  of  extreme  importance,  including  par- 
ticipation in  two  investigations  which  led  to  the  internment 
of  alien  enemies,  the  conviction  of  eleven  offenders  against 
the  espionage  laws,  the  capture  and  conviction  of  numer- 
ous deserters  and  the  successful  prosecution  of  other  offend- 
ers, Chief  Davis  and  his  associates  take  greater  pride  in 
the  results  of  constructive  work  of  another  type.  This 
included  the  re-establishment  with  their  boards  of  4,479 
delinquents  under  the  selective  service  regulations,  and 
the  apologies  and  promises  to  mend  their  ways  obtained 
from  men  and  women  who,  in  some  cases,  had  deliberately, 
but  in  most  instances  unwittingly,  extended  aid  and  com- 
fort to  the  enemy.  It  is  estimated  that  at  least  two  hun- 
dred men  and  women,  who  had  been  guilty  of  spreading 
false  reports  or  of  other  conduct  of  an  unfriendly  nature, 
were  sho^\Ti  the  fallacy  of  their  actions  in  such  a  manner 
that  they  voluntarily  surrendered  their  previous  ideas  and 
embraced  Americanism  with  more  —  or  less  —  zeal. 

For  the  protection  of  active  Aiembers,  who  frequently 
encountered  emergencies  requiring  authoritative  action, 
and  often  were  obliged  to  make  immediate  arrests  to  insure 
the  detention  of  persons  guilty  of  serious  offenses,  an 
arrangement  was  made  whereby  a  large  percentage  of  the 
operatives  were  formally  deputized  as  special  officers  of 
the  Minnesota  Public  Safety  Commission.  This  gave  them 
sufficient  police  authority  to  cope  with  any  situation  which 
arose.  But  for  this,  it  would  not  have  been  possible  for 
the  organization  to  make  its  record  of  important  arrests. 
This  authority  permitted  the  carrying  of  arms  for  protec- 
tion, and  although  instances  where  '*  gun  play  "  was 
required  were  few,  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Justice  and 
the  Minnesota  Public  Safety  Commission  had  no  occasion 
to  regret  the  authority  and  responsibility  conferred  upon 
these  men.  They  were  enabled,  by  virtue  of  this  authority, 
to  enter  many  places,  which  otherwise  might  have  been 
closed  to  them,  in  time  to  correct  conditions  which,  if 
hegleeted,  would  have  given  rise  to  serious  difficulties. 

The  Minneapolis  Division  American  Protective  League 
was  the  first  local  division  to  attempt  a  large-scale  slacker 
round-up.    The  results  and  experience  of  the  Minneapolis 


314  THE  WEB 

raids  were  responsible  for  similar  activities  in  other  cities, 
which  put  into  the  Army  hundreds  of  men  who  otherwise 
might  have  evaded  military  service.  The  first  organized 
slacker  ''  raid  "  in  Minneapolis  took  place  on  March  26, 
1917.  One  hundred  and  twenty  operatives  were  employed 
in  hauling  the  drag-net  through  the  cheaper  hotels  in  the 
Gateway  lodging  house  district.  Approximately  one  hun- 
dred men  were  taken  to  the  temporary  detention  place, 
and  twenty-one  men  —  deserters,  unregistered  enemy  aliens 
and  men  whose  draft  status  could  not  be  determined  — 
were  sent  to  the  county  jail. 

On  April  6,  two  hundred  and  fifty  operatives,  with  two 
hundred  National  Guard  escorts,  visited  saloons,  cafes, 
pool  rooms  and  dance  halls,  starting  at  8:00  p.  m.  and 
continuing  until  10:00  p.  m.,  and  picked  up  1,150  men  in 
various  places.  The  Chief  and  a  corps  of  assistants  con- 
ducted the  questioning  throughout  the  night.  There  were 
still  two  hundred  men  in  custody  when  breakfast  was 
served  Sunday  morning.  Long  distance  telephone  and 
the  telegraph  were  employed  to  determine  the  status  of 
the  non-residents.  Twenty-seven  men  were  locked  up. 
Other  less  extensive  raids  were  conducted  through  the 
spring  and  summer  of  1918  and  at  different  periods,  squads 
of  operatives  being  stationed  at  the  various  railroad  sta- 
tions to  search  for  draft  evaders.  As  many  as  twenty 
prisoners  were  taken  in  these  stations  in  a  single  day,  and 
it  was  seldom  that  a  day  passed  which  did  not  yield  tAvo 
or  more  deserters  or  delinquents. 

One  morning  a  dapper  individual  who  arrived  at  one 
station  was  asked  if  he  had  his  draft  card. 

*^  Certainly,"  he  replied,  reaching  confidently  into  his 
pocket.  The  smile  gradually  disappeared  from  his  face 
and  he  delved  into  pocket  after  pocket  without  finding  the 
necessary  credentials.  Finally  he  gave  up  in  despair  and 
admitted  he  did  not  have  his  card.  He  was  an  exception 
to  the  rule,  however,  and  did  not  become  indignant.  He 
said,  '*  Take  me  along  —  I  deserve  it."  At  headquarters 
he  proved  to  be  '*  Chick  "  Evans  of  Chicago,  national  open 
golf  champion  of  the  United  States.  He  had  come  to  Min- 
neapolis to  participate  in  a  golf  foursome  for  the  benefit 
of  the  Red  Cross!     He  waited  fully  two  hours  until  a 


THE  STORY  OF  MINNEAPOLIS  315 

telegram  was  received  from  his  Board  in  Chicago  stating 
that  he  ^vas  in  good  standing. 

Another  spectacular  raid  conducted  by  the  Minneapolis 
Division  was  on  the  show  lot  of  the  Ringling  Circus. 
Thirty  men  were  taken  into  custody  on  charges  of  draft 
irregularities,  and  nearly  all  of  these  were  inducted  into 
the  army.  It  was  reported  that  resistance  might  be  offered, 
and  precautions  had  been  taken  in  the  arrangements  for 
the  raid.  No  difficulty  was  encountered,  however,  and 
later  in  the  day  the  proprietor  of  the  circus  complimented 
us  on  the  manner  in  which  the  round-up  had  been  con- 
ducted. 

A  different  type  of  raid  was  undertaken  at  the  request 
of  commandants  of  the  various  Army  detachments  in  and 
near  Minneapolis.  They  complained  that  a  number  of 
imposters  in  army  uniforms  were  bringing  discredit  to  the 
soldier}^  and  requested  that  these  be  apprehended.  There 
were  so  many  soldiers  on  leave  in  Minneapolis  at  all  hours 
that  it  had  been  found  extremely  difficult  to  identify  the 
imposters,  and  so  it  was  decided  that  with  the  coopera- 
tion of  the  various  commandants  a  literal  drag-net  process 
should  be  resorted  to  on  a  given  evening.  Forces  of  opera- 
tives were  stationed  at  opposite  extremes  of  the  central 
business  district.  More  than  two  hundred  men  partici- 
pated, squads  being  formed,  and  one  squad  being  stationed 
at  each  end  of  each  street.  The  operatives  stopped  every 
uniformed  man  who  was  encountered  and  demanded  his 
pass.  An  even  dozen  uniformed  men  who  did  not  have 
passes  were  picked  up  and  turned  over  to  Army  and  Navy 
authorities,  who  attended  in  automobiles.  For  a  long  time 
there  was  an  entire  absence  of  reports  of  offenses  on  the 
part  of  imposters  in  service  uniforms. 

Early  in  the  summer  a  system  of  nightly  A.  P.  L.  patrols 
was  established  in  the  down-town  section  of  Minneapolis. 
Operatives  worked  in  squads  of  two  or  three  men,  some 
of  them  giving  attention  to  draft  evaders,  others  to  the 
work-or-fight  order,  and  others  to  bootleggers.  ^  Scarcely 
a  night  passed  without  a  record  of  one  or  more  important 
arrests,  and  the  entire  personnel  of  the  League  became 
intimately  acquainted  with  the  down-town  business  and 
social  structures. 


316  THE  WEB 

In  the  conduct  of  these  nightly  patrols  a  special  head- 
quarters was  established  in  a  down-town  public  building. 
The  captain  in  charge  directed  operations  from  this  place. 
Not  only  was  he  able  to  keep  the  railroad  stations,  hotels, 
cafes,  saloons  and  other  public  places  under  continuous 
surveillance  for  slackers,  but  he  also  had  forces  constantly 
available  to  meet  any  emergencies  which  arose  during  the 
evenings.  Squads  frequently  were  dispatched  from  this 
headquarters  to  various  points  of  the  city  to  give  attention 
to  special  cases. 

One  of  the  first  draft  evasion  cases  investigated  by  the 
Minneapolis  Division  is  a  great  short  story  ready-made. 
It  concerned  a  young  man  prominent  in  labor  circles.  He 
had  been  an  avowed  opponent  of  all  the  national  war 
measures,  and  was  particularly  bitter  in  his  condemnation 
of  the  Selective  Service  Act.  It  was  reportedi  on  good 
authority  that  although  he  was  within  the  draft  age  he  had 
declined  to  register  and  intended  to  resort  to  any  device 
necessary  to  evade  service. 

The  first  inquiry  was  made  at  the  Board  of  Health, 
where  it  was  ascertained  that  no  record  of  his  birth  was 
on  file.  Attention  was  next  called  to  the  poll  books,  and 
it  was  found  that  the  age  he  had  given  when  registering 
as  a  voter  placed  him  safely  within  the  provisions  of  the 
draft  act.  His  school  enrollment  record  was  investigated 
and  it  was  found  that  the  ages  given  in  the  various  grades 
made  him  amenable  to  the  draft.  He  had  three  insurance 
policies,  and  the  original  applications  which  he  had  signed 
showed  him  to  have  been  less  than  thirty-one  years  old  on 
June  5,  1917.  The  last  step  was  to  search  for  the  marriage 
record  of  his  father  and  mother.  They  were  found  to  have 
been  married  in  a  small  town  near  Minneapolis  in  Novem- 
ber, 1885. 

When  the  young  man  was  summoned  to  headquarters 
he  admittedi  the  authenticity  of  all  these  records,  but 
insisted  that  he  knew  he  was  past  thirty-one  on  Juno  5, 
1917.  He  refused  to  state  on  what  information  he  based 
this  assertion,  and  was  held  for  prosecution.  One  final 
attempt  was  made  to  clear  his  status,  and  with  considerable 
effort  his  mother,  who  had  divorced  his  father  more  than 
twenty-five  years  before,  was  located.     At  the  end  of  an 


THE  STORY  OF  MINNEAPOLIS  317 

unsatisfactory  interview  lasting  nearly  an  hour  she  finally 
broke  down  and  in  tears  admitted  the  boy  had  been  born 
out  of  wedlock  and  that  she  had  been  responsible  for  the 
falsification  of  the  records  in  order  to  indicate  his  legiti- 
macy. She  said  that  she  had  withheld  this  secret  even 
from  the  subject,  not  divulging  to  him  until  a  few  days 
before  the  day  of  registration  and  then  only  because  he 
seemed  so  bitter  over  the  fact  that  he  must  register.  Her 
appearance  was  so  venerable  and  her  determination  to 
assist  him  so  emphatic  that  there  appeared  little  chance 
of  successful  prosecution,  so  the  man  was  released.  Head- 
quarters never  received  any  further  reports  of  un-American 
activities  on  his  part. 

A  later  case  of  interest  involved  an  admitted  deserter, 
both  from  the  German  and  the  United  States  Army. 
Whether  he  is  guilty  of  other  offenses  has  not  yet  been 
determined.  On  September  12,  1918,  the  day  of  registra- 
tion for  men  up  to  forty-six  years  of  age,  two  operatives 
on  duty  were  struck  by  the  peculiar  actions  of  a  man  who 
appeared  to  register.  They  managed  to  get  near  him  with- 
out attracting  suspicion.  In  stating  his  occupation  he  said 
he  was  an  iron  moulder.  They  noticed  that  his  hands  were 
soft  and  white.  When  he  left  the  registration  place,  one 
of  the  operatives  followed  him.  The  other  telephoned  to 
the  plant  where  the  man  had  said  he  w^as  employed  and 
learned  that  he  was  not  known  there.  The  individual  was 
*'  shadowed  "  to  a  lodging  house,  but  had  departed  while 
the  first  operative  was  telephoning.  The  house  was  put 
under  surveillance,  and  after  a  period  of  five  days  the 
operative  gained  entrance  and  searched  his  room.  Among 
his  effects  were  blank  checks  from  banks  in  various  cities, 
photographs  in  German  army  uniforms  of  a  man  recog- 
nizable as  the  subject,  and  various  letters  and  pamphlets 
in  German,  some  of  which  were  suspicious.  Under  the 
carpet  in  the  room  w^as  an  official  United  States  Army 
discharge  blank. 

The  fact  that  this  paper  had  been  so  carefully  hidden 
caused  further  suspicion,  and  the  watch  was  maintained 
for  another  five  days,  when  a  man  appeared  at  the  house 
seeking  to  rent  the  room  which  had  been  occupied  by  the 
subject.     He  described  the  particular  room.     On  instruc- 


318  THE  WEB 

tions  from  the  operatives,  the  landlady  let  him  have  it. 
When  he  entered  the  room  he  startedj  packing  the  effects 
of  the  subject,  and  shortly  ^afterwards  left  the  house  with 
the  subject's  two  suitcases.  He  was  stopped  outside  and 
questioned.  He  said  a  man  had  given  him  $5.00  to  go  to 
that  lodging  house,  to  rent  that  particular  room,  to  get 
his  belongings  and  to  meet  him  at  a  certain  place  the  fol- 
lowing morning,  where  he  agreed  to  give  him  $50.  This 
man  was  held  over  night  and  was  sent  out  the  next  day 
to  make  the  appointment  arranged  by  the  subject.  The 
subject  was  there  and  was  taken  into  custody.  After  a 
gruelling  examination  he  admittedj  being  a  deserter  from 
the  United  States  Army.  He  later  confessed  that  he  was 
a  German  alien  and  said  he  also  had  deserted  from  the 
army  in  Germany.  He  would  not  account  for  his  activities 
in  the  months  which  had  elapsed  between  his  desertion 
from  the  Army  and  his  capture  in  Minneapolis.  He  had 
a  considerable  sum  of  money,  but  could  not  prove  he  had 
done  any  work.  He  was  turned  over  to  the  military 
authorities. 

Topping  all  other  humorous  experiences  was  that 
encounteredj  by  one  of  the  most  efficient  of  the  Minne- 
apolis District  A.  P.  L.  Captains.  He  had  orders  to  arrest 
a  deserter  who  bore  a  Polish  name  ending  in  *'-ski."  After 
a  long  search  he  was  informed  that  this  man  lived  in  one 
of  the  slum  sections,  working  all  day  and  arriving  at  his 
lodging  place  generally  about  1 :00  a.  m.  He  could  not 
learn  where  the  man  worked  and  so  was  compelled  to 
locate  him  at  his  room.  Going  there  to  make  inquiries 
one  night,  he  was  told  that  the  man  Avas  there.  Having 
been  informed  that  the  fellow  was  dangerous  and  fearing 
that  he  would  become  alarmed  and  flee  if  he  was  not  taken 
into  custody  immediately,  the  captain  went  into  his  room. 
Asking  if  he  were  '*  So-and-so-ski,"  the  man  said  he  was. 
He  was  told  to  get  up  and  dress  and  come  along.  Although 
he  was  surly  he  showed  no  resistance  and  accompanied  the 
captain  outside.  The  captain  felt,  however,  that  this  docil- 
ity might  be  assumed,  and  thought  he  would  take  no 
chances.  The  place  was  about  a  mile  from  the  jail.  The 
captain  had  an  automobile,  but  did  not  feel  it  would  be 
safe  to  take  the  prisoner  in  the  seat  with  him.    He  there- 


THE  STORY  OF  MINNEAPOLIS  319 

fore  compelled  him  to  straddle  the  hood  on  the  car,  and 
on  this  ungainly  perch,  with  the  temperature  20°  below, 
the  unfortunate  suspect  was  driven  to  the  court  house. 
Arriving  there,  the  prisoner  scratched  his  head  and  asked : 

''  What  yuh  bringin'  me  down  here  for?  " 

"  Why,  because  you  didn't  register  for  the  draft.  You 
know  what." 

**  Didn't  register  for  the  draft?  I  guess  I  did!  Here 
is  my  blue  card  and  my  classification  card." 

Explanation  followed.  This  man's  name  ended  with  the 
Polish  ''-ski  "  and  was  otherwise  almost  identical  to  the 
name  of  the  culprit  who  was  sought.  When  he  was  asked 
if  he  was  **  So-and-so-ski,"  it  sounded  so  much  like  his 
own  name  that  he  admitted  it.  He  was  taken  back  to  his 
lodgings  in  the  seat  beside  the  captain  and  proper  apolo- 
gies were  made. 

In  most  cases  where  humor  existed,  there  was  sometimes 
a  mixture  of  tragedy.  There  was  one  man,  a  motor  truck 
driver,  who  had  made  himself  exceedingly  popular  with 
a  number  of  women  by  Avearing  a  uniform  of  an  infantry- 
man without  having  gone  through  the  formality  of  enlist- 
ment. He  was  captured  one  day  while  paying  a  call  on 
one  of  his  admirers.  Operatives  burst  in  upon  the  imposter 
and  told  him  he  must  straightway  doff  the  uniform. 

"  But  this  is  the  only  suit  of  clothes  I  have,"  he  pro- 
tested. One  operative  went  to  his  truck  and  found  an 
oil-stained  suit  of  overalls.  He  was  taken  behind  the  screen 
and  forced  to  get  into  these  and  give  up  his  military 
raiment. 

Another  incident  of  this  kind  involved  a  young  man 
who  was  subject  to  draft  and  v/ho  said  he  was  ready  to 
respond  when  called.  He  could  not  wait  the  Government 
issue  of  clothes,  however.  He  went  to  a  tailor  and  equipped 
himself  with  a  suit  of  khaki  which  fitted  perfectly  and 
further  adorned  himself  with  the  insignia  of  the  Artillery 
Service  and  an  officer's  sleeve  braid.  When  he  was  sum- 
moned to  headquarters,  he  explained  that  he  intended  to 
take  this  uniform  to  camp  to  wear  w^hen  ''  he  went  to 
town."  His  readiness  to  wear  the  uniform  was  com- 
municated to  his  draft  boards  by  telephone  and  brought 
orders  for  immediate  induction.    Although  he  had  sold  all 


320  THE  WEB 

of  his  civilian  clothes,  one  suit  was  recovered  from  the 
second-hand  dealer  who  had  purchased  them,  and  he  went 
to  camp  in  it. 

One  Saturday  night  a  young  man  of  stentorian  voice, 
wearing  classical  shell-rimmed  glasses,  appeared  at  a 
prominent  down-town  corner,  mounted  a  soap-box  and 
shouted,  *^  Step  closer,  gentlemen.  I  have  no  bombs,  no  ' 
T.  N.  T.,  no  lyddite,  no  dynamite  or  powder  explosives  of 
any  kind.  Step  closer  though  and  I'll  treat  you  to  some 
talk-bombs."  In  the  vanguard  of  those  who  stepped  closer 
were  two  A.   P.   L.   operatives.     Five  minutes  later  the 

orator,  Herbert  Blank,   alias  Herbert   C ,   deserter 

from  the  British  army,  was  registered  at  the  county  jail. 
The  shell-rimmed  glasses  and  his  predilection  to  Bolsheviki 
oratory  had  proved  his  downfall.  They  had  been  men- 
tioned in  a  bulletin  asking  his  apprehension,  sent  out  from 
Chicago  headquarters  of  the  Department  of  Justice  and 
received  that  morning  in  Minneapolis  headquarters. 

The  leading  man  of  the  theatrical  company  which  scored 
the  biggest  hit  of  any  troupe  playing  Minneapolis  last  win- 
ter applied  his  cold  cream  and  other  theatrical  embellish- 
ments for  his  Saturday  matinee  performance  under  the 
eyes  of  an  A.  P.  L.  operative  whilst  he  confessed  to  the 
operative  that  it  was  quite  possible  that  he  should  have 
registered  for  the  draft,  although  he  had  not.  At  the 
request  of  the  New  York  A.  P.  L.  headquarters,  this  man 
was  examined,  and  although  he  carried  with  him  a  sworn 
statement  from  his  father  to  the  effect  that  he  had  been 
born  prior  to  June  5,  1886,  cooperation  with  the  Toledo 
A.  P.  L.  had  developed  evidence  that  this  was  not  true. 
Before  the  interview  was  concluded,  ample  evidence  was 
secured  to  warrant  the  arrest  of  the  actor,  but  his  role  was 
so  prominent  and  there  was  such  a  certainty  that  the  com- 
pany would  be  compelled  to  cancel  all  of  its  engagements 
with  distinct  losses  to  all  its  members,  that  mercy  was 
shown  and  he  was  allowed  to  continue  the  performance 
until  such  a  time  as  his  draft  status  could  be  adjusted. 
For  several  weeks,  during  the  travels  of  the  company,  he 
was  compelled  to  report  daily  at  the  offices  of  the  U.  S. 
Department  of  Justice  injthe  various  cities  visited. 

One  night  a  squad  of  operatives,  led  by  the  Chief,  visited 


THE  STORY  OF  MINNEAPOLIS  321 

an  apartment  in  a  down-town  building  to  investigate  a 
report  that  liquor  was  being  served  to  soldiers  and  sailors. 
When  they  gained  entrance  they  foundj  no  uniformed  men 
upon  the  premises,  but  one  of  the  operatives  who  had 
lived  in  San  Francisco  recognized  the  unmistakable  odor 
of  opium  smoke.  He  said,  *'  Hop,  Chief!  "  A  search  was 
made  and  a  large  quantity  of  opium  was  found  secreted 
in  various  nooks  of  the  apartment.  Further  search  revealed 
twenty-three  sticks  of  dynamite,  a  complete  kit  of  burglar's 
tools,  a  supply  of  saws  and  other  devices  used  by  crooks. 
A  bolt  of  silk  and  other  new  merchandise,  afterwards  iden- 
tified as  property  stolen  from  stores,  also  was  uncovered. 
Five  men  and  a  woman  were  taken  to  jail. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  cases  was  that  of  a  German 
who  left  Germany  fifty-six  years  ago,  at  the  age  of  six 
years.  He  went  to  South  Dakota,  where  he  prospered 
greatly,  and  moved  to  Minneapolis  about  fifteen  years  ago. 
At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  his  remarks  were  such  that 
his  business  associates  and  social  acquaintances  practically 
ostracized  him,  and  the  members  of  his  lodge  preferred 
charges  of  disloyalty  against  him.  The  man  was  brought 
to  headquarters.  Members  of  his  lodge  were  invited  to 
be  present,  and  he  was  given  twenty  minutes  seeing  him- 
self as  others  saw  him.  His  attitude  at  first  was  stubborn 
and  defiant.  The  Chief  then  began  to  dwell  on  the  suffer- 
ing of  his  children;  said  they  were  refused  admittance  to 
fraternities,  were  not  invited  to  parties  and  that  his  boy 
departed  for  the  mobilization  camp  brokenhearted  and  in 
tears  over  the  fact  that  none  of  his  family  were  at  the 
station  to  bid  him  good-bye  at  the  most  important  mile- 
stone in  his  career.  This  line  of  talk  seemed  to  soften  the 
subject.  He  broke  down  and  said,  with  tears:  ^'  I  never 
was  talked  to  like  this  before  in  my  life,  but  I  never  had 
anything  said  to  me  that  did  me  so  much  good.  Will  you 
please  shake  hands  with  me?  "  After  that  his  fellow 
lodge  members  affected  a  reconciliation  on  the  spot.  This 
man's  future  conduct  was  above  reproach  after  this  inci- 
dent, and  he  became  one  of  the  most  active  workers  for 
the  Red  Cross  and  Liberty  Loan. 

A  well  known  clairvoyant  and  spiritualist  medium  of 
Minneapolis  was  brought  into  the  office  by  one  of  the  Dis- 


322  THE  WEB 

trict  Captains.  She  was  told  that  she  had  been  talking 
sedition,  and  waxed  indignant  at  the  idea  of  anybody  accus- 
ing her  of  sedition  when  she  was  a  woman  so  far  removed 
from  ordinary  planes,  who  conld  see  into  vast  rounds  of 
space.  Her  complacency  was  seriously  jarred  when 
informed  that  one  of  our  operatives  had  crawled  into  her 
basement  through  the  coal  chute  and  listened  to  her  sedi- 
tious talk.  Her  inability  to  see  into  the  basement  caused 
her  to  have  renewed  faith  in  the  long  arm  of  Uncle  Sam. 

A  bond  salesman  earning  $10,000  a  year  was  only  two 
weeks  under  thirty-one  years  of  age  on  the  5th  of  June, 
1917.  A  report  came  in  from  a  former  sweetheart  who 
had  been  jilted.  Operatives  found  where  the  subject  had 
made  application  for  two  insurance  policies,  taken  out  two 
or  three  years  previous,  in  another  city,  which  gave  his 
age  and  place  of  birth.  When  brought  into  the  office,  the 
man  stated  that  no  authentic  birth  record  was  in  existence, 
and  that  his  birth  was  recorded  in  the  family  Bible  in  a 
Southern  city,  in  the  custody  of  his  mother.  Not  having 
the  address  of  his  mother,  that  angle  not  having  been  cov- 
ered, we  anticipated  that  he  would  attempt  to  communi- 
cate with  his  mother.  The  wires  were  covered  and  a  mes- 
sage was  picked  up  about  thirty  minutes  after  subject  had 
left  the  office  instructing  the  mother  to  destroy  the  family 
birth  record  page  in  the  Bible  and  to  send  him  an  affidavit 
that  he  was  born  a  year  earlier  than  he  was.  Needless 
to  say,  the  local  operatives  in  that  district  where  his  mother 
lived  secured  the  necessary  legal  data.  We  hope  that  this 
young  man  has  done  more  for  his  country  during  the 
months  he  has  been  in  France  than  he  did  previously  as 
far  as  being  a  patriotic  American  is  concerned.  Incident- 
ally, he  felt  so  secure  in  his  position  that  during  the  spring 
months  of  1918  he  had  married. 

A  man  and  w^oman  occupying  a  small  cottage  in  the 
outskirts  of  the  city  were  reported  as  acting  in  a  very 
suspicious  manner,  keeping  the  windows  carefully  covered, 
not  allowing  anyone  to  come  into  the  house,  and  not  even 
allowing  the  meter  readers  to  get  in  until  after  considerable 
delay.  Boxes  of  glass  of  a  small  size  were  delivered  very 
often,  and  investigation  at  the  glass  house  showed  that 
they  always  paid  cash,  would  not  give  any  name,  and 


THE  STORY  OF  MINNEAPOLIS  323 

always  received  the  supplies  at  the  front  porch,  and  that 
the  same  practice  was  indulged  in  about  the  delivery  of 
hardware,  small  orders  of  lumber,  and  other  materials. 
The  house  was  carefully  watched  for  a  couple  of  weeks, 
and  many  attempts  were  made  to  get  in.  The  sound  of  ma- 
chinery could  be  heard  and  one  of  the  operatives  who  finally 
got  in  as  a  meter  reader  reported  a  small  electric  motor  in  the 
basement  which  seemed  to  be  some  sort  of  a  work  shop.  The 
man  and  woman  who  lived  there  kept  so  close  to  his  heels 
that  he  was  not  able  to  do  much  without  exciting  suspicion. 
At  regular  intervals  the  couple  visited  the  post  office, 
where  they  shipped  packages  to  different  addresses 
throughout  the  Northwest.  These  packages  were  regis- 
tered, and  they  seemed  to  be  very  careful  in  their  handling 
of  them.  It  w^as  decided  that  we  had  best  pick  them  up 
on  the  street  and  bring  the  couple  to  the  office  when  they 
had  these  packages  in  their  possession,  and  the  operative 
would  follow.  Examination  of  the  packages  in  the  office 
disclosed  the  fact  that  there  were  small  framed  pictures 
which  this  man  and  woman  were  manufacturing  and  send- 
ing to  the  woman's  husband,  who  was  on  the  road  selling 
them.  This  satisfactorily  explained  the  mysterious  pack- 
ages which  were  thought  to  be  infernal  machines.  The 
queerness  of  this  woman  in  always  carrying  a  small  leather 
traveling  bag  prompted  us  to  examine  the  contents  of 
the  bag,  which  proved  to  be  a  large  amount  of  money 
which  this  woman  was  carrying  openly  through  the  street 
of  Minneapolis,  part  of  it  in  coins.  When  reprimanded 
for  this  matter  of  taking  the  money  around  with  her,  she 
explained  that  they  were  Danish  and  did  not  understand 
American  customs  very  well.  While  living  in  Chicago 
they  had  deposited  the  savings  of  several  years  in  a  private 
bank  which  failed,  and  ever  since  that  time  they  had  kept 
their  savings  constantly  on  their  persons.  We  explained 
the  banking  system  to  them  and  sent  them  to  a  fellow 
countryman,  who  is  the  vice-president  of  one  of  our  large 
banks.  They  left  their  money  in  his  custody,  except  a 
considerable  portion  which  they  invested  in  Liberty  Bonds. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  STORY  OF  NEW  ORLEANS 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  the  Sunny  South — Strong  Division  of  the 
Crescent  City — How  the  League  was  Organized — Rapid 
Growth  and  Wide  Activities — Curbing  of  Vice — Cleaning 
Up  a  City. 

There  is  not  in  all  the  United  States  a  more  lovable 
city  than  that  founded  by  Iberville,  in  an  earlier  century, 
above  the  Delta  of  the  Mississippi.  At  first  French,  then 
part  Spanish,  part  American,  all  Southern  and  yet  all 
cosmopolitan.  New  Orleans  has  what  we  may  call  a  per- 
sonality not  approached  by  any  other  community  on  this 
continent.  Up  to  the  time  when,  a  decade  or  so  ago,  the 
once  self-contented  South  began  to  reach  out  for  a  com- 
mercial future,  so-called.  New  Orleans  was  the  true  Mecca 
on  this  continent  of  the  Northern  tourists.  No  need  to 
go  to  Europe  if  one  wanted  different  scenes.  Here  existed 
always  the  glamour  of  old-world  customs,  an  atmosphere 
as  foreign  as  it  was  w^hoUy  delightful.  As  the  home  of 
easy  living  and  good  cooking,  as  the  place  of  kindly  cli- 
mate and  gentle  manners,  all  flavored  with  a  wholesome 
carelessness  as  to  life  and  its  problems.  New  Orleans  was, 
to  use  a  very  trite  expression,  in  a  class  quite  by  herself. 
She  never  has  had  a  rival,  and  more  is  the  pity  that  the 
old  New  Orleans  has  succumbed  to  the  modern  tendency 
towards  utilization  and  change  which  has  marked  all 
America. 

Of  such  a  community  it  might  be  expected  that  none 
too  rigid  a  view  of  life  and  law^  w^ould  obtain.  This  would 
not  be  true  of  the  better  elements  of  New  Orleans,  yet 
it  was  in  part  true  of  all  the  life  along  the  old  Gulf  Coast, 
where  Lafitte  and  all  his  roisterers  once  lived,  and  where 
all  the  gentleness  and  ease  of  nature  tended  toward  what 
we  might  call  loose  living  —  or  at  least  joie  de  vivre.     The 

324 


THE  STORY  OF  NEW  ORLEANS  325 

soul  of  New  Orleans  came  out  annually  in  her  Mardi  Gras 

—  the  exuberant  flowering  of  a  spirit  perennially  young 
and  riante. 

And  yet  to  New  Orleans  came  the  sobering  days  of  the 
war,  as'  to  all  the  rest  of  America.  The  conscription  fell 
upon  her  as  upon  every  other  city  in  America;  and  she 
also  was  asked  to  open  her  purse  for  the  furtherance  of 
the  war  and  its  purposes.  How  she  responded  need  not 
be  asked,  andj  need  not  really  be  recorded,  for  New  Orleans 
has  always  maintained  beneath  her  laughing  exterior  as 
stern  a  sense  of  duty  as  may  be  found  anywhere  in  all  the 
world.  To  be  French  is  to  smile  —  but  to  be  firm.  Indeed, 
New  Orleans  showed  one  of  the  strange  phenomena  of 
American  life  which  is  not  ahvays  known  in  the  North 

—  the  truth  that  the  South  is  more  Puritan  than  ever 
New  England  was.  Texas,  supposed  to  be  a  bad  border 
state,  to-day  has  stronger  laws  regarding  vice  and  liquor 
than  New  England  ever  has  had  since  the  time  of  the 
Blue  Laws,  and  more  strictly  enforced.  Louisiana  also, 
gentle  and  kindly,  has  a  stiffer  code  of  morals  than  any 
commonwealth  of  the  stern  and  rockbound  coast.  She 
smiles  —  but  stands  firm. 

These  reflections  become  the  more  obvious  as  one  reads 
the  main  story  of  the  activities  of  A.  P.  L.  in  New  Orleans. 
The  di\asion  does  not  pride  itself  ever  so  much  upon  its 
promptness  with  Liberty  Loans,  its  activity  in  slacker 
drives,  its  firmness  as  to  sabotage  and  propaganda,  as  it 
does  upon  other  phases  of  work  Avhich  at  first  were  inci- 
dental to  the  prosecution  of  the  Government  war  activities. 
The  great  boast  of  the  New  Orleans  division  is  that  it  has 
kept  young  soldiers  away  from  bad  women,  and  kept 
women,  once  evil,  away  from  themselves  and  gave  them 
a  chance  to  reform  and  to  live  a  different  life.  So,  there- 
fore, one  who  shall  study  all  the  manifold  activities  of 
the  American  Protective  League  in  this  country  will  see 
that  it  had  many  ways  in  which  it  rendered  service  to  the 
people.  Perhaps,  long  after  the  League  shall  have  been 
dissolved,  in  part  forgotten,  the  New  Orleans  rehabilita- 
tion home,  ten  miles  out  from  the  city,  will  remain  as  a 
monument  to  the  activities  of  that  singular  organization 
which,  like  King  Rex  himself,  ruler  of  the  Carnival,  came 


326  THE  WEB 

from  some  mysterious  region  and  vanished  thence  again, 
leaving  behind  only  good  memories. 

On  January  29,  in  1918,  the  New  Orleans  division  of 
A.  p.  L.  had  only  thirty-eight  members.  At  that  time  Mr. 
Chkrles  AVeinberger  became  manager,  there  being  asso- 
ciated with  him  as  assistant  chief  Mr.  Arthur  G.  Newmyer. 
There  were  at  first  but  limited  office  quarters,  but  in  a 
very  short  time  new  headquarters  were  established  and  the 
plant  installed  covering  approximately  ten  thousand  square 
feet  of  space.  This  was  on  April  1,  1918.  On  February  1, 
1919,  the  total  membership  was  2,097. 

League  operations  were  distributed  under  a  Bureau  of 
Investigation  and  a  Bureau  of  Information,  each  in  charge 
of  an  assistant  chief.  The  investigation  work  was  divided 
by  Special  D.  J.  Agent  Beckham  as  follows:  Headquarters 
bureau,  handling  enemy  alien  activities,  disloyalty,  sedi- 
tion, propaganda,  etc.,  had  two  units,  a  staff  of  eighty-three 
headquarters  lieutenants,  and  also  a  ward  organization. 
In  each  of  the  seventeen  wards  of  New  Orleans  there  was 
a  lieutenant  who  had  enough  operatives  under  him  to  cover 
his  neighborhood  thoroughly. 

The  second  bureau,  that  of  Information,  took  up  on  its 
part  the  trades  classification  rather  than  that  which  we 
may  call  the  geographical  classification  into  city  districts. 
There  was  a  captain  in  each  of  the  seventy-eight  commer- 
cial lines  of  the  city,  and  each  captain  had  lieutenants  and 
operatives  in  his  particular  line  of  business.  In  this  way 
there  was  what  might  be  called  a  double  covering  of  the 
city,  both,  as  to  information  and  investigation.  For 
instance,  in  each  hotel  there  w^ould  be  a  captain,  lieutenant 
and  operatives.  The  Bureau  of  Information  had  entire 
charge  of  the  financial  end  of  the  League,  and  it  supplied 
men  to  the  Investigation  Division  for  the  purpose  of  raids, 
or  for  whatever  matter  required  special  assistance. 

In  the  War  Department  work,  the  selective  service 
bureau  was  in  charge  of  a  captain  with  proper  assistants, 
who  handled  all  violations  under  Section  6  of  the  Act.  A 
member  of  this  bureau  was  detailed  with  each  exemption 
board,  and  this  division  handled  all  the  draft  investiga- 
tions. It  made  a  great  many  searches  of  this  sort,  pre- 
vented a  great  many  evasions,  and  corrected  many  incor- 


THE  STORY  OF  NEW  ORLEANS  327 

rect  classifications.  In  the  slacker  raids  which  New 
<i^rleans  had  in  common  with  practically  every  other  big 
city  of  the  country  there  Avere  sometimes  as  many  as  three 
hundred  operatives  employed,  and  it  is  estimated  that 
more  than  20,000  slacker  investigations  were  made  in  all. 

New  Orleans  was  a  *^  wet  town,"  in  close  proximity  to 
two  Naval  stations,  three  aviation  fields,  and  two  canton- 
ments. It  is  easily  seen  what  this  meart  in  the  way  of 
activities  for  the  A.  P.  L.  There  was  a  special  liquor 
bureau  put  in  charge  of  a  captain  and  assistants.  The 
division  Chief  and  his  aids  made  an  agreement  with  all 
the  local  brcAveries  and  all  the  wholesale  and  retail  liquor 
dealers  that  no  intoxicating  liquor  should  be  sold  in  bottles 
after  7  :00  p.  m.  This  cut  uif  a  great  deal  of  bootlegging 
and  much  of  the  heavier  drinking  which  could  not  be 
controlled  by  the  local  police.  This  bureau  was  most  effi- 
cient, as  is  demonstrated  by  the  fact  that  Colonel  Charles 
B.  Hatch,  U.  S.  Marines,  who  was  in  charge  of  the  police 
forces  of  Philadelphia,  was  sent  down  to  New  Orleans  by 
Secretary  Daniels  of  the  Navy  to  make  an  investigation 
of  the  New  Orleans  situation,  and  reported  that  so  long 
as  the  A.  P.  L.  was  on  the  job  there  was  no  need  for  the 
establishment  of  a  military  police  in  New  Orleans,  or  of 
extending  any  other  law-enforcing  organization.  A.  P.  L. 
has  rarely  had  a  better  compliment  than  this. 

This  bureau  had  chemists  making  analyses  of  several 
alleged  soft  drinks,  and  caused  a  cessation  in  their  sale 
when  they  were  of  a  suspicious  character.  In  general,  it 
locked  up  the  town  in  a  manner  entirely  satisfactory  to 
the  military  and  naval  authorities.  Anyone  going  to  New 
Orleans  in  war  times  would  have  found  it  anything  but  a 
wide-open  place. 

Yet,  but  lately.  New  Orleans  was  called  rather  an  '^  open 
town  "  in  other  ways:  hence  the  vice  bureau,  established 
under  the  constant  personal  supervision  of  the  division 
Chief.  There  were  squads  kept  out  all  the  time  in  con- 
trol of  the  ''district  "  and  uptowTi  sections  of  the  city, 
this  patrol  being  kept  up  day  and  night.  It  was  not  in 
the  least  infrequent  that  A.  P.  L.  men  would  be  out  many 
nisrhts  on  service  of  this  sort. 

In  order  that  the  operations  of  this  vice  bureau  might 


328  THE  WEB 

be  facilitated,  Chief  Weinberger  was  named  U.  S.  Com- 
missioner by  Federal  Judge  Foster.  AVomen  apprehended 
under  Section  13  of  the  Conscription  Act  were  brought 
before  Commissioner  Weinberger,  their  cases  investigated 
and  affidavits  made.  When  necessary,  they  were  sent  to 
the  isolation  hospital  for  investigation  as  to  their  physical 
status. 

In  order  to  prevent  sending  these  unfortunate  women  to 
jail  with  criminals,  the  American  Protective  League  at  New 
Orleans  engaged  in  the  enterprise  earlier  referred  to  — 
its  *  *  Amproleague  Farm. ' '  Here  there  were  ample  dormi- 
tories, fully  equipped,  and  a  garden  was  maintained. 
There  was  a  matron  in  charge.  The  place  was  kindly 
and  helpful  in  every  way,  and  every  attempt  was  made 
to  change  the  women  spiritually  as  well  as  physically  dur- 
ing their  stay.  Thus  the  League  went  a  step  further  than 
acting  simply  as  a  merciless  police  force.  It  took  care  of 
young  men  who  ought  to  have  taken  better  care  of  them- 
selves, but  it  did  more.  It  took  care  not  of  one  sex  alone, 
but  of  both  sexes,  and  in  the  truer  and  more  lofty  sense 
of  the  word. 

In  this  operation  of  the  liquor  and  vice  bureaus,  local 
Army  and  Navy  camps  detailed  men  to  help  the  A.  P.  L. 
The  local  organization  of  the  Home  Guard,  to  the  number 
of  about  a  hundred,  were  admitted  to  membership  in  the 
League  also.  This  organization,  which  was  under  military 
discipline,  could  be  quickly  assembled  for  night  service. 
Transport  of  the  League  was  cared  for  by  the  automobile 
division  of  the  Bureau  of  Information.  The  latter  men 
rendered  special  service  to  prevent  the  shipment  of  liquor 
into  dry  territory,  whether  in  violation  of  the  Reed 
Amendment  or  in  violation  of  Section  12  of  the  Conscrip- 
tion Act.  The  New  Orleans  district  had  one  neighboring 
cantonment  which  was  in  drv^  territory. 

In  brief,  New  Orleans  showed  what  all  the  divisions  of 
A.  P.  L.  did  throughout  the  country  —  good  judgment  and 
common  sense.  It  did  the  thing  necessary  to  be  done,  the 
most  obvious  and  most  useful  thing.  That  duty  was  the 
caring  for  the  personnel  of  the  soldiers  and  sailors  grouped 
in  such  numbers  in  or  close  to  New  Orleans.  Human 
nature  was  accepted  as  human  nature,  and  dealt  with  as 


THE  STORY  OF  NEW  ORLEANS  329 

such.  These  are  the  conditions  which  perforce  colored  the 
work  of  A.  P.  L.  in  New  Orleans.  They  do  not  reflect  the 
average  community  life  of  that  city  in  any  ordinary  sense 
of  the  word,  although  many  of  the  cases  most  valued  by 
the  Di\4sion  itself  have  had  to  do  with  that  manner  of 
work. 

For  instance,  the  vice  bureau  apprehended  two  young 
women  under  Section  13  of  the  Conscription  Act.  Brought 
before  the  U.  S.  Commissioner,  they  were  released  upon 
their  personal  recognizance,  but  failed  to  appear  on  the 
next  morning.  Later  they  were  located  in  Houston,  Texas, 
and  brought  back  to  New  Orleans.  They  were  not  kicked 
doT\Ti.     They  found  homes  at  the  "  Amproleague  Farm." 

Matters  did  not  go  so  gently  in  the  vice  operations  so 
far  as  they  had  to  do  with  the  older  and  more  persistent 
offenders.  There  were  raids  on  some  of  the  more  notorious 
resorts,  and  several  of  them  closed  their  doors  entirely. 
There  was  a  general  cleaning  up  in  New  Orleans  which 
was  good  for  the  city  whether  or  not  it  remained  a  center 
of  military  activities. 

A  common  practice  of  New  Orleans  taxicab  drivers  was 
to  meet  all  trains  coming  in  from  the  cantonments  and 
to  offer  the  sights  of  the  city,  liquor  and  taxicab  included, 
to  any  enlisted  man  for  a  net  sum  varying  from  five  to  ten 
dollars.  The  League  practically  wiped  out  this  pernicious 
practice  by  putting  on  the  trains  A.  P.  L.  men  in  uniform 
as  soldiers.  When  they  got  off  the  train  and  were  thus 
accosted  by  taxicab  drivers,  they  had  all  the  evidence 
which  was  necessary.  The  taxicab  practice  was  seriously 
interfered  with. 

A  neighboring  city  was  alleged  to  have  examined  incor- 
rectly before  its  draft  board  a  certain  young  man,  giving 
him  a  classification  to  which  he  was  not  entitled.  Investi- 
gation was  set  on  foot  by  the  A.  P.  L.,  who  uncovered  the 
fact  that  the  man's  father  conducted  a  sanitarium  patron- 
ized by  drug  and  liquor  patients.  He  had  treated  several 
members  of  the  board  in  his  sanitarium,  and  had  likewise 
had  the  Federal  district  judge  as  a  patient,  as  well  as 
several  other  influential  citizens  of  the  community.  Thus, 
having  rather  confidential  information,  A.  P.  L.  had  very 
little  difficulty  in  framing  up  its  case. 


330  THE  WEB 

It  will  perhaps  not  be  necessary  to  go  into  the  usual 
series  of  narratives  of  interesting  cases  in  the  instance  of 
the  Crescent  City.  The  report,  as  outlined  above,  is  so 
different  in  its  general  phases  from  that  of  the  average 
division  that  it  may  be  allowed  to  stand,  with  the  addition 
of  its  tabulated  totals,  which  cover  all  the  forms  of  assist- 
ance to  the  Government  in  which  A.  P.  L.  has  participated 
throughout  the  United  States. 

Alien  enemy  activities 292 

Citizen  disloyalty  and  sedition 1,626 

Sabotage,  bombs,  dynamite,  defective  manufacture 24 

Anti-military  activity,  interference  with  draft 34 

Propaganda — word  of  mouth  and  printed 1,326 

Radical  organizations — I.  W.  W.,  etc 43 

Bribery,  graft,  theft  and  embezzlement 82 

Naturalization,   impersonation,   etc 827 

Counter-espionage  for  military  intelligence 2 

Selective  Service  Regulations  under  boards 2,194 

In  slacker  raids,  estimated , 20,000 

Of  local  and  district  board  members 4 

Work  or  fight  order 254 

Character  and  loyalty — civilian  applicants 103 

Applicants  for  commissions 57 

Training  camp  activities — Section  12 2,919 

Training  camp  activities — Section  13.... 2,843 

Camp    desertions 140 

Collection  of  foreign  maps,  etc 3,500 

Counter-espionage  for  Naval   Intelligence 206 

Collection  of  binoculars,  etc 8 

Food  Administration — hoarding,  destruction,  etc 453 

Fuel  Administration — hoarding,  destruction,  etc 964 

Department   of   State — Miscellaneous 7 

Treasury  Department — War  Risk  Insurance,  etc 625 

United  States  Shipping  Board 15 

Alien   Property   Custodian — Miscellaneous 7 

Red  Cross  loyalty  investigations.  .7" 409 

The  decision  to  demobilize  the  American  Protective 
League  was  arrived  at  somewhat  suddenly,  for  reasons 
more  or  less  obvious  to  all  members  of  the  League.  As 
recently  as  November  13,  1918,  Mr.  Bielaski,  Chief  of  the 
Bureau  of  Investigation  of  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Jus- 
tice, wrote  to  Chief  Weinberger,  expressing  the  assurance 


THE  STORY  OF  NEW  ORLEANS  331 

that  the  American  Protective  League  by  no  means  ought 
to  disband,  since  peace  was  not  yet  declared,  and  since 
need  for  the  League's  services  still  existed.  He  said,  *'  I 
am  entirely  satisfied  that  the  need  for  this  organization  will 
continue  for  some  time  to  come,  entirely  without  regard 
to  the  progress  of  peace  negotiations.  The  tremendous 
machines  which  have  been  organized  by  the  Government 
for  the  prosecution  of  this  war  cannot  be  stopped  abruptly, 
and  must  continue  to  operate  for  many  months  under  any 
circumstances.  The  American  Protective  League  has  a 
large  share  of  the  work  in  this  country  which  has  made 
possible  the  united  support  and  the  full  success  of  our 
arms  abroad,  and  I  am  sure  that  your  organization  will 
continue  to  play  its  full  part  until  the  Department  is  will- 
ing to  say  that  it  has  no  further  need  for  its  services." 

Now,  a  few  months  after  these  expressions,  the  League 
is  dissolved  and  its  work  declared  ended.  Is  it  ended? 
New  Orleans  thinks  not,  and  points  at  least  to  one  instance 
of  civic  betterment  which  has  not  yet  demobilized  —  its 
^'  Amproleague  Farm."  The  officials  found  there  an  old 
sugar  plantation  which  dated  back  to  1857.  The  old  resi- 
dence was  built  over  as  a  modern  home,  equipped  with 
forty  windows,  a  dormitory  with  fifty  beds,  a  room  with 
six  sewing  machines,  also  ample  galleries  and  well-fitted 
kitchens.  Here  the  League  has  built  a  little  community 
home  which  it  is  not  yet  ready  to  see  die.  It  is  a  home 
where  an  erring  person  is  given  a  chance  to  begin  over 
again.  And  after  all,  has  not  that  been  a  part  of  all  the 
work  of  A.  P.  L.  in  all  the  country?  From  time  to  time 
in  other  reports  we  have  seen  it  stated :  * '  We  tried  to 
show  this  or  that  pro-German  where  he  was  wrong"; 
*' We  tried  to  change  rather  than  to  punish";  **  We 
endeavored  to  improve  our  citizenship  rMher  than  penalize 
those  who  had  made  mistakes."  So,  therefore,  we  may 
say  that  New  Orleans  has  added  a  good  chapter  to  the 
good  history  of  this  body  of  thoughtful  citizens  —  it  has 
helped  make  the  world  and  the  country  better  than  it  was 
before. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

A  Series  of  Graphic  Case  Stories  from  All  Over  the  Golden 
State — Stirring  Romances  from  the  Capital  of  Romance — 
The  A.  P.  L.  in  San  Francisco,  Los  Angeles,  Santa  Barbara, 
San  Diego,  and  Everywhere  Between — the  Pacific  Coast 
in  War  Times. 

Time  was  when  there  were  just  two  really  cosmopolitan 
towns  in  the  United  States.  Merely  being  mixed  in  popu- 
lation does  not  mean  cosmopolitanism;  but  San  Francisco 
and  New  Orleans  were  two  towns  which  could  offer  any 
American  something  to  see.  The  fire  changed  San  Francisco 
to  a  certain  extent,  and  the  North  has  ruined  New  Orleans 
all  it  could;  but  the  soul  of  each  of  these  two  towns  still 
goes  marching  on,  incapable  of  destruction.  If  sudden 
wealth  could  not  make  San  Francisco  avaricious,  nor  solid 
prosperity  leave  her  sordid;  if  earthquake,  fire  and  famine 
could  not  daunt  her  unquenchably  buoyant  heart  —  what 
reason  have  we  to  believe  that  a  small  matter  like  a  world 
war  would  much  disturb  her  poise  ? 

'Frisco  by  the  Golden  Gate  —  that  last  viewpoint  where 
America  faces  the  Orient  and  her  own  future  as  well  —  took 
her  war  philosophically,  allowed  her  Hindu  conspiracies  to 
run  their  course,  and  viewed  with  none  too  great  agitation 
the  flood  of  disloyalty  which  inevitably  was  caught  by  the 
western  shore,  just  as  once  a  better  sort  of  material  was 
caught  in  the  sluices  of  her  old  Long  Toms.  San  Francisco 
knows  she  is  here  to  stay,  and  believes  that  this  Republic  also 
is  here  to  stay. 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  San  Francisco 

That  there  would  be  an  A.  P.  L.  organization  in  San  Fran- 
cisco admitted  of  no  doubt.     The  city  was  ably  organized 

332 


THE  STORY  OP  CALIFORNIA  333 

and  certainly  took  able  care  of  Fritz  and  his  Boche-loving 
friends.  But  all  California  is  divided  into  three  parts: 
Northern  California,  Southern  California  —  and  all  Cali- 
fornia !  An  offense  to  one  means  a  fight  for  all,  although 
each  allows  a  certain  amount  of  thumb-biting  on  the  part  of 
a  native  son.  The  A.  P.  L.  in  California  followed  precisely 
this  ancient  line  of  cleavage,  so  that  there  was  established 
a  Northern  Division,  a  Southern  Division  —  and  a  State  In- 
spectorship !  The  State  Inspector  was  Mr.  Douglas  White, 
who  himself  is  a  traveling  man,  and  therefore  cannot  be  ac- 
counted as  belonging  to  either  North  or  South.  Mr.  A.  J. 
DeLamare  had  the  division  office  in  San  Francisco,  where 
the  organization  so  closely  followed  the  general  lines  already 
described  in  other  cities  that  it  perhaps  is  not  needful  to 
go  into  details  here. 

That  California's  polyglot  population  meant  potential 
trouble  may  be  seen  in  the  heads  of  the  Frisco  reports:  a 
total  of  1,612  cases  of  disloyalty  and  sedition,  277  cases  of 
propaganda,  and  105  of  radicalism,  such  as  that  of  I.  W.  W., 
etc.  The  work  for  the  war  boards  —  slackers,  desertion,  char- 
acter and  loyalty,  etc.  —  footed  up  2,415  cases  in  all,  the 
grand  total  carried  on  the  records  as  actual '  *  cases  ' '  amount- 
ing to  5,691. 

The  Department  of  Justice  labors,  as  usual  in  all  the 
great  cities,  meant  a  vast  amount  of  time  and  energy  ex- 
pended on  the  part  of  A.  P.  L.  men,  with  the  usual  percent 
of  win,  lose,  and  draw  —  all  offered  in  the  infinite  variety 
aft'orded  by  the  California  climate.  Some  of  the  cases  were 
odd,  some  mysterious,  and  a  good  many  of  them  big.  Per- 
haps a  few  from  the  many  turned  in  by  Frisco  may  be  found 
interesting,  though  chosen  practically  by  chance.  One  of 
these  is  a  wireless  case.  It  should  not  be  dismissed  as  an- 
other "  mysterious  signal  "  fliv\^er  until  read  quite  through 
to  its  close. 

Mrs.  B and  her  mother  had  moved  into  a  flat  on 

Williard  street.  The  persons  who  occupied  the  flat  before 
them  came  back  to  get  some  plates  and  other  material,  which 

looked  so  strange  that  Mrs.  B thought  there  had  been 

a  wireless  plant  there,  so  she  reported  it.  They  refused  to 
give  up  the  fixture  material  then  in  their  possession.  The 
place  was  on  a  high  hill  overlooking  the  bay  and  would  have 


334  THE  WEB 

been  an  ideal  locality  for  a  wireless  plant  which  might  have 
given  information  to  the  enemy. 

Operative  No.  440  took  over  this  case.  He  found  that  the 
house  stood  at  the  edge  of  a  wood  on  a  rocky  hill.  The  two 
women  explained  that  the  place  had  been  occupied  by  a  man 

named  G who  seemed  very  mysterious.     He  would 

hang  around  the  house  all  day  and  come  home  at  different 
hours.  He  moved  away  suddenly.  He  used  to  make  trips 
in  the  woods  with  people  not  known  about  there.  Operative 
found  in  the  house  several  base  plates  for  electric  light  plugs, 
also  electric  wires  grounded  on  the  water  and  gas  pipes, 
and  also  a  hole  cut  in  the  side  of  the  house,  as  is  done  when 
a  high  tension  wire  is  passed  through. 

Mrs.  B stated  that  at  night  sounds  similar  to  those 

made  by  a  wireless  sending  outfit  often  were  heard,  also  that 
a  sound  representing  rapping  signals  occurred  at  the  rear 
of  the  house.  The  operative,  making  all  allowances  for  a 
woman's  nervousness,  returned  that  evening.  Sure  enough, 
he  heard  the  sounds  persistently  as  described.  They  did 
come  from  the  rear  of  the  house,  and,  although  examination 
was  made  there  at  once  and  next  day  by  daylight,  he  was 
unable  to  tell  what  made  the  sound^. 

The  case  now  looked  promising,  so  the  operative  again 
went  over  the  premises.  He  could  not  find  any  trace  of 
wireless  apparatus.  He  did  find  a  pipe  starting  at  the  edge 
of  the  woods  and  tried  to  follow  this.  It  led  to  the  brink 
of  a  high  bluff.  Just  at  the  edge  of  the  bluff  the  operative 
almost  stepped  on  a  rattlesnake,  and  in  attempting  to  escape 
he  rolled  to  the  bottom  of  the  bank,  carrying  the  pipe  with 
him !  When  he  came  to,  he  was  free  of  the  snake.  He  looked 
at  his  pipe,  but  found  it  clogged  with  dirt.  It  therefore 
could  not  have  been  used  lately  as  a  wire  conduit. 

Nothing  could  be  learned  of  the  former  occupant,  G , 

except  that  he  was  a  musician.  Inquiry  among  musical 
societies  and  unions  finally  located  him  as  a  plaj^er  in  a 
place  called  the  ' '  Hoffbrau  ' '  —  since  very  patriotically 
changed  to  the  ''  States  Cafe."  Reports  were  that  he  had 
been  born  in  the  city  of  New  York  and  served  honorably  in 
the  United  States  Navy.  His  wife's  father  had  fought  in 
the  Civil  War.  After  G^ had  been  found,  the  oper- 
ative had  a  talk  with  him.     Soon  thereafter,  light  was  offered 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  335 

on  a  very  mysterious  situation.     G explained  that  he 

had  to  move  very  quickly  as  his  wife  had  rented  a  new 
house  without  notifying  him.  When  he  moved  he  had  for- 
gotten those  base  plates  —  which  were  intended  only  for 
household  use,  percolators,  etc.  But  when  he  went  away  the 
dog  was  not  taken.  He  had  come  back  a  number  of  times  to 
the  old  place  trying  to  locate  the  dog.  At  last  he  had  re- 
membered these  base  plates  and  tried  to  secure  them,  as  he 
had  put  them  in  himself.  It  looked  like  a  clean  bill  of 
health  for  G ;  but  how  about  the  mysterious  noises  ? 

The  operative  once  more  secreted  himself  at  the  edge  of 
the  woods  at  about  ten  o  'clock  that  night  and  began  to  watch 
the  house.  At  eleven  o'clock  he  again  heard  the  mysterious 
sounds  at  the  rear  of  the  house.  He  slipped  up  quietly  and 
there  found  the  solution  of  his  really  wireless  mystery.  The 
"signals"  were  made  by  the  home-sick  dog,  which  was  try- 
ing to  locate  its  former  owner !  He  would  come  to  the  house 
in  the  night  and  scratch  on  the  screen  door,  making  sounds 
like  a  wireless  discharge.  His  tail  knocking  on  the  boards 
made  the  rapping  nose.  When  a  strange  person  would  open 
the  door  he  would  disappear  in  the  darkness  of  the  woods, 
so  no  cause  for  the  sounds  could  be  traced.  So  there  you 
^ere  —  a  perfectly  beautiful  mystery !  It  is  told  in  the  re- 
port in  a  very  unagitated  style,  but  really  it  is  a  pretty  good 
case  of  A.  P.  L.  work. 

All  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  were  enlisted  and  carried 
on  the  A.  P.  L.  rolls ;  but  did  you  ever  hear  of  an  anthropol- 
ogist A.  P.  L.?  There  was  one  at  San  Francisco.  It  was 
reported  that  a  man  living  in  Alameda,  a  geologist  and 
mining  engineer  employed  by  an  oil  company,  was  fitting 
out  a  launch  to  go  to  Mexico  and  purchase  supplies.  His 
trip  was  alleged  to  be  for  the  purpose  of  oil  prospecting. 
He  appeared  to  tell  a  straight  story,  and  said  he  had  bought 
surveying  instruments  and  food  and  intended  to  clear  duly. 

Two  days  later  another  A.  P.  L.  operative  heard  that  this 
man  had  left  for  Washington,  stating  that  he  must  get  some 
passports,  although  he  was  known  to  have  passports  already. 
As  a  third  man  from  the  San  Francisco  A.  P.  L.  office  was 
going  on  to  Washington,  these  facts  were  given  him  and  he 
was  asked  to  give  the  man  the  once-over  in  Washington. 
He  did  this  and  found  that  the  boat-owner  was  getting  pass- 


336  THE  WEB 

ports  to  England.  He  found  also  that  this  person  was  asso- 
ciated with  Professor  M ,  who  claimed  to  be  looking 

up  oil  conditions  in  this  country  and  studying  anthropology 
on  the  side. 

As  this  operative  also  was  interested  in  anthropology,  he 

and  Professor  M got  on  very  well,  although  the  San 

Franciscan  was  not  very  much  impressed  by  the  learned 
man's  fundamental  knowledge  in  a  scientific  way.  There 
was  nothing,  however,  to  show  that  the  professor  was  engaged 
in  any  enemy  activities.  But  the  San  Franciscan  operative 
gathered  the  notion  that  the  visiting  passport-seeker  might 
possibly  be  engaged  in  spreading  German  propaganda  among 
the  many  negroes  about  the  city  of  Washington.  He  finally 
discovered  in  his  possession  a  lot  of  pictures  of  a  very  unde- 
sirable sort,  intended  for  German  distribution  among  negro 
troops  in  France,  with  the  intention  of  creating  dissatisfac- 
tion among  such  troops.  These  pictures  carried  the  legend, 
''  See  what  is  happening  to  your  wives  and  families  while 
you  are  in  France. ' '  Copies  of  these  pictures  were  obtained. 
The  operative  made  the  further  discovery  that  Professor 

M was  in  the  employ  of  this  pseudo-mining-engineer, 

who  now  stood  revealed  as  an  active  German  propagandist. 
It  was  also  learned  where  this  latter  Kultur-spreader  got  his 
pictures. 

Arrangements  were  made  with  one  of  the  professor's 
photographic  subjects  so  that  the  operatives  might  listen  in 
on  certain  flashlight  performances  by  night.  To  cut  all  that 
unprintable  sort  of  thing  short,  it  may  be  said  that  the  oper- 
atives, while  seated  on  the  porch,  heard  and  saw  all  they 
liked  of  the  German  color-blindness. 

The  learned  professor,  however,  having  his  suspicions 
aroused  by  the  fact  that  the  door  kept  opening  and  would 
not  stay  shut  as  it  ought  to  have  done,  came  to  the  door, 
poked  his  head  out  and  saw  the  operatives  sitting  on  the 
porch.  One  operative  sat  there  with  a  camera  in  his  lap 
and  a  flash  gun  in  his  right  hand,  intending  to  make  pictures 
of  the  picture  maker  himself,  so  that  evidence  of  the  repre- 
hensible nature  of  his  own  pictures  might  be  discovered.  The 
professor,  however,  sprang  back  into  the  room  and  presently 
came  out  armed  with  a  gun  and  a  bayonet.  The  operatives 
at  once  fell  off  the  back  of  the  porch.     Lunging  at  the  first 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  337 

man,  the  professor  missed;  but  he  caught  the  second  oper- 
ative with  the  bayonet  in  the  wrist  and  ripped  up  his  fore- 
arm. The  men  closed  in  upon  him  and  there  was  a  warm 
fight  for  quite  a  while.  Details- are  not  desirable  and  need 
not  be  given.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  nature  of  the 
photographs  was  disclosed  and  details  turned  in  to  the  proper 
quarters.  The  anthropological  German  professor  later  was 
arrested  and  turned  over  to  the  Department  of  Justice. 
At  last  accounts  he  was  in  jail  at  Washington  awaiting  trial. 
Regarding  his  performance,  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  his 
anthropological  tendencies  seemed  to  run  true  to  German 
scientific  form. 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  Sausalito 

Not  so  far  from  San  Francisco  by  w^ay  of  the  crow's 
flight  is  the  Marin  County  Division  of  the  A.  P.  L.  at  Sausa- 
lito. This  division  also  had  a  case  of  mysterious  light  flashes 
— from  Belvidere  Island.  Signals  came  from  several  different 
directions  and  several  different  sources,  but  no  one  could 
ever  be  located  as  receiving  them.  Across  the  bay  from 
Belvidere  is  Angel  Island,  a  large  internment  camp,  and 
in  either  direction  lies  a  neighborhood  which  is  very  pro- 
German.  There  might  have  been  signals,  but  no  one  seemed 
to  be  able  to  trace  the  code  or  get  anything  intelligible. 
Investigation  of  this  thing  lasted  for  over  a  year,  and 
finally  the  division  concluded  it  was  the  action  of  someone 
trying  to  intimidate  the  residents  of  that  vicinity.  It  was 
not  run  down. 

Located  in  the  hills  was  an  organization  knowns  as  the 
*'  German  Tourists'  Club,"  which  had  been  incorporated  in 
Vienna,  Austria.  Prior  to  our  entering  the  war  it  was  vis- 
ited by  many  alien  enemies  and  many  German-Americans, 
so  that  it  was  under  constant  surveillance  of  the  Intelligence 
services  of  the  United  States  and  also  by  the  A.  P.  L.  of 
Marin  County.  Considerable  information  was  furnished  to 
the  authorities,  and  one  alien  enemy  was  interned.  Another 
alien  enemy  was  apprehended  who  had  $2,500  cash  on  his 
person  and  was  trying  to  get  to  South  America,  whence  he 
intended  to  return  to  Germany.  The  same  club  turned  out 
yet  another  man  who,  on  a  railroad  train,  was  heard  abusing 


338  THE  WEB 

this  country.  An  A.  P.  L.  man  heard  him  and  asked  a  con- 
stable to  arrest  him  at  once.  He  was  taken  to  the  county 
jail,  where  his  remarks  were  so  abusive  that  the  Department 
of  Justice  immediately  took  him  into  custody  for  internment. 
The  hilly,  wooded  and  mountainous  character  of  Marin 
County,  bordering  on  the  ocean,  made  it  a  favorite  resort 
for  hikers,  hunters,  fishermen  and  the  like,  and  it  has  many 
locations  which  would  afford  excellent  rendezvous.  It  kept 
the  A.  P.  L.  operatives  busy  in  all  their  spare  time  walking 
and  driving  through  the  country.  On  one  such  trip  along 
the  sea  shore,  in  a  very  remote  place,  a  Navy  torpedo  was 
found.  It  proved  to  be  only  a  practice  one,  having  no  war 
head,  but  it  might  have  been  worse. 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  Los  Angeles 

The  sun-kissed  Southwest  handled  its  A.  P.  L.  work  in  a 
wholly  modern  way,  as  perhaps  some  of  the  sidelights  will 
show.  How  quaint  and  curious  some  of  these  chuckle-mak- 
ing anecdotes  —  and  how  grave  some  of  the  serious  ones  — 
will  seem  fifty  years  from  now,  when  California  will  be  look- 
ing back  on  another  generation  of  her  large  and  swift  his- 
tory! 

The  report  from  the  city  of  Los  Angeles  is  one  entirely 
consistent  with  the  reputation  of  that  busy  community,  and 
as  usual  the  totals  ran  large.  Los  Angeles  handled  2,136 
cases  of  alien  enemy  activity;  5,275  selctive  service  investi- 
gations ;  1,494  examinations  for  disloyalty  and  sedition ;  289 
cases  of  propaganda  by  word  of  mouth  and  61  by  means  of 
the  printed  page.  There  were  289  investigations  of  radicals 
and  pacifists,  and  648  of  all  other  natures,  not  mentioning 
those  which  had  to  do  with  food  hoarding,  waste,  etc.,  which 
made  a  formidable  total  of  themselves.  There  are  not  many 
sections  which  report  a  wider  or  more  interesting  range  of 
experiences. 

As  in  the  case  of  practically  all  our  cities,  at  the  time  the 
war  broke  out,  the  Deparment  of  Justice  for  Los  Angeles 
was  inadequately  equipped  with  men,  motor  cars  and  data- 
chasers  to  deal  with  the  numerous  alien  enemies,  German 
sympathizers  and  non-patriotic  citizens.  Los  Angeles 
frankly  says  that  this  species  of  the  human  fauna  seem  to 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  339 

be  peculiar  to  Southern  California,  and  certainly  the  totals 
of  Los  Angeles  would  indicate  as  much.     The  Chief  says: 

Some  of  regretted  that  we  could  not  do  more  for  the  Gov- 
ernment, for  the  work  of  the  A.  P.  L.  appealed  very  strongly 
to  us.  When  we  saw  the  local  Government  situation,  a  number 
of  us  at  once  offered  to  help.  The  outstanding  feature  of  all 
this  work  was  the  absolute  cowardliness  of  the  pro-German 
individual.  In  all  our  cases  I  cannot  recall  one  where  any- 
thing like  courage  was  displayed  on  the  part  of  the  subject. 
The  moment  they  realized  they  were  confronted  by  anything 
like  authority  their  fear  and  their  efforts  at  self-protection 
were,  to  say  the  least,  extreme.  Individuals  were  brought  to 
the  attention  of  the  various  departments  who  did  not  under- 
stand and  cannot  to  this  day  realize  how  the  intimation  was 
received.  They  did  realize,  however,  that  there  was  authority 
back  of  us.  In  many  cases,  the  Military  Intelligence  Depart- 
ment called  us  to  their  assistance  where  information  could 
not  be  secured  in  any  other  way.  We  also  were  able  to 
help  the  Food  Administration. 

There  is  distinct  food  for  thought  in  the  closing  remarks 
of  the  all  too  modest  Los  Angeles  chief,  made  before  the 
dissolution  date  of  the  A.  P.  L.  was  announced: 

In  conclusion,  I  will  say  that  a  great  deal  of  good  could  be 
done  by  some  form  of  permanent  organization  of  the  A.  P.  L., 
or  at  least  the  retention  of  a  nucleus  for  a  continuation  of 
this  work  if  it  becomes  necessary.  From  time  to  time  certain 
conditions  are  certain  to  occur  in  this  country,  brought  about 
either  by  war  measures  or  discontent  among  a  certain  class, 
which  will  require  drastic  handling.  The  American  Protective 
League  can  secure  more  valuable  information  and  better  assist 
in  bringing  the  attention  of  the  authorities  to  such  facts  than 
any  other  similar  body  of  citizens  in  the  country. 

These  are  words  of  gold  and  show  the  heart  of  Los  Angeles 
to  be  certainly  in  the  right  place.  It  is  a  new  and  troubled 
America  that  we  have  all  got  to  face  now,  with  or  without  an 
A.  P.  L. 

As  to  the  odd  and  interesting  stories  noted  by  the  Los 
Angeles  operatives,  the  latter  as  usual  seem  to  take 'more 
delight  in  telling  of  their  fiascos  than  they  do  of  their  suc- 
cesses, but  saving  grace  was  usually  there.  For  instance  a 
woman  and  her  husband  living  in  Glendale  were  very  rabid 


340  THE  WEB 

about  the  war,  and  hence  received  a  visit.  The  informants 
turned  out  to  be  church  members  and  apparently  desirable 
citizens.  The  female  suspected  fell  into  hysterics,  cursed  the 
Frenchman  who  lived  next  door  and  the  Englishman  who 
lived  several  houses  beyond,  and  declared  she  had  bought 
Liberty  Bonds  and  had  up  flags  enough  to  be  left  alone.  The 
German  himself  demanded  to  know  by  what  authority  he 
was  visited.  The  League  man  told  him  there  was  plenty 
of  authority  all  right,  and  that  he  did  not  need  to  specify. 
The  suspect  took  a  good  hint,  and  from  that  time  neither  the 
man  nor  his  wife  was  guilty  of  any  public  utterance  of 
any  sort  whatever  on  war  matters. 

One  Herman  F.  H claimed  that  he  was  a  ''  secret 

service  man  "  and  showed  a  badge  and  some  handcuffs,  but 
still  talked  very  pro-German.     He  said  among  other  things, 
that  the  American  people  would  wake  up  —  that  the  Kaiser 
would  show  them  something  —  that  we  could  not  win  the 
war.     His  nearest  friend  was  an  army  sergeant  by  the  name 

of  Paul  S of  Fort  McArthur.     These  two  would  talk 

together  in  German.  The  doughty  U.  S.  sergeant  was  also 
of  the  belief  that  our  army  had  no  chance  and  said  the 
soldiers  were  all  dissatisfied.  They  were  both  investigated. 
The  sergeant  was  put  in  jail  at  Los  Angeles.  Military  Intel- 
ligence took  over  the  rest  of  the  case  —  and  M.  I.  D.  has 
never  been  noted  for  its  mercifulness. 

An  over-zealous  woman  in  one  instance  reported  suspicious 
activity  on  the  part  of  a  family  which  had  a  great  many 
mysterious  packages  delivered  at  their  address.  She  said 
they  had  quantities  of  large  pipe  which  they  would  fill  with 
guns  and  ammunition,  also  boxes  of  rifle  cartridges.  Investi- 
gation proved  that  some  of  the  mysterious  packages  were 
only  lunch  baskets ;  that  the  trucks  were  hauling  large  pieces 
of  well-casing  and  sometimes  small  articles  of  grocery  or 
hardware  were  slipped  into  the  pipes  to  save  space.  They 
had  no  packages  of  ammunition  at  all,  and  the  packages 
of  cartridges  were  only  pasteboard  boxes  containing  shelled 
walnuts.     Jumpy  times. 

A  man  by  the  name  of  M came  from  Chicago,  and 

closely  folloAving  him  came  a  report  that  he  was  wanted 
by  the  Chicago  police.  Operatives  located  the  man  and 
thought  he  would  look  well  in  the  uniform  of  the  United 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  341 

States  Army,  but  the  recruiting  office,  inquiring  into  the 
reason  for  the  Chicago  telegram,  found  that  the  man  had 
served  a  term  in  the  penitentiary'.  He  was  not,  therefore, 
classified  even  as  a  slacker  and  he  did  not  get  into  the  Army, 
which  will  not  receive  anyone  who  has  served  a  prison 
sentence. 

Los  Angeles  had  considerable  to  do  with  the  stoppage 
of  propaganda  by  means  of  motion  pictures,  that  city  being 
the  capital  of  fiimdom.  Newspaper  reports  of  the  cases  of 
the  film  "  Patria  "  and  of  ''  The  Spirit  of  1776  "  are  famil- 
iar to  the  reading  public.  A.  P.  L.  was  always  on  hand  for 
film  censorship  purposes. 

A  case  which  attracted  considerable  attention  was  kno^vn 
as  the  von  H case.  The  subject  was  a  native  of  Ger- 
many, fifty-three  years  of  age,  a  resident  in  the  United 
States  for  thirty-two  years.  He  never  had  become  a  citizen, 
although  once  employed  in  the  California  post  office.  Yon 
H was  a  movie  actor  who  did  sp}^  parts.  He  frat- 
ernized with  the  soldiers  and  sailors  in  propria  persona,  and 
liked  to  ask  them  to  his  room  for  conversations  over  the  war. 
At  length  he  was  arrested.  His  rooms  turned  out  a  mass 
of  evidence,  including  four  hundred  snap  shots  and  some 
forty  letters  of  the  vilest  nature.  He  had  intended  to  send 
this  material  over  to  Germany  to  show  the  lack  of  morale 
of  the  American  soldiers  and  sailors.  He  had  an  oil  paint- 
ing of  the  Kaiser,  a  picture  of  von  Hindenburg  and  one  of 
the  German  flaor.  He  Avas  sentenced  to  five  years,  but  it  is 
not  thought  that  he  will  live  out  his  sentence.  Perhaps  we 
can  struggle  along  without  him. 

There  is  no  character  in  whom  the  public  more  naturally 
reposes  confidence  than  in  the  tried  and  true  negro  Pullman 
porter,  but  this  is  the  story  of  one  such  porter  accused  of 
draft  evasion.  He  was  confined  in  jail  but  was  offered  re- 
lease if  he  would  go  into  the  Army.  He  told  the  operative 
that  he  would  go  all  right,  but  that  his  check  for  forty  dol- 
lars was  not  on  hand  and  that  he  needed  about  five  dollars 
to  ''  float  himself."  The  operative  loaned  him  the  five  dol- 
lars and  the  Pullman  porter  is  still  floating.  Neither  Army 
nor  anyone  else  has  heard  of  him  since. 

Most  of  the  more  groundless  suspicions  and  imaginings  of 
Americans  regarding  German  spies  arose  among  the  women 


342  THE  WEB 

of  the  country.  Their  apprehensions  at  times  would  lead 
them  to  report  almost  anything.  One  small  demure  little 
woman  once  applied  to  the  headquarters  of  the  A.  P.  L.  in 
Los  Angeles  and  said  that  she  knew  parties  —  German  spies 
—  who  received  money  from  Germany  and  who  had  no  re- 
sources other  than  the  funds  of  the  German  Government. 
The  chief  asked  her  upon  what  she  based  her  information. 
The  little  lady  looked  carefully  around  the  room,  under  the 
table  and  out  of  the  window,  and  then  came  close  up  to  the 
chief  before  she  gave  him  the  real  basis  of  her  charge.  She 
said  that  the  parties  referred  to  were  the  possessors  of  a 
cuckoo  clock  which  she  was  sure  was  made  in  Germany; 
hence  they  must  be  pro-Germans,  and  therefore  spies ! 

The  German  ministers,  it  seems,  infest  the  Pacific  slope 
as  well  as  the  northwestern  part  of  the  United  States.  Here- 
with the  case  of  Emile  K ,  minister  of  a  German  Meth- 
odist church.  An  operative  went  into  his  church  and  took 
his  seat  in  the  last  pew.     He  reports : 

A  broad  shouldered  man  in  a  frock  coat  sat  down  beside 

me,  introduced  himself  as  Rev.  K and  asked  me  if  I 

was  one  of  the  Liberty  Bond  salesmen.  I  denied  any  such 
impeachment,  saying  this  to  him  in  German.     This  seemed  to 

please  him  very  much,  and  Mr.  K thawed  out.     He  told 

me  after  a  while  that  he  was  born  in  Wisconsin  but  that  his 
heart  was  in  the  right  place,  like  most  people  that  were  born 
there  in  "Little  Germany."  He  said  he  had  been  in  Mexico, 
where  he  had  spent  four  years  "very  profitably."  He  smiled 
at  me — rather  meaningly,  I  thought.  He  wanted  to  know 
how  the  Irish  were  behaving  toward  our  people  in  New  York. 
He  also  said  that  it  was  too  bad  the  Americans  did  not  want 
to  fight.  He  thought  that  if  the  Japanese  were  to  come  over, 
it  might  arouse  our  manhood.  He  asked  me  to  be  sure  and 
call  again,  as  he  enjoyed  my  company  very  much.  There  was 
something  cold-blooded  about  this  man  that  made  me  think 
he  would  look  better  in  a  German  uniform  than  in  a  preacher's 
coat.  What  worries  me  about  him — and  I  hope  the  A.  P.  L. 
will  square  it — is  that  I  had  to  put  a  quarter  in  the  collection 
plate  to  keep  up  appearances.  I  demand  that  two  bits  back 
if  the  A.  P.  L.  ever  puts  him  in  the  jug! 

An  operative  was  sent  out  to  get  a  deserter  who  seemed 
to  be  rather  of  an  inventive  turn  of  mind.     He  found  his 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  343 

man  in  a  barn,  and  when  the  suspect  came  out,  the  operative 
ran  up  and  called  him  b}^  name.  The  suspect  turned  and 
asked  him  if  he  was  arrested.  When  the  operative  asked 
him,  '^  Arrested  for  what?  "  he  replied,  ''  You  know,  all 
right."  He  then  admitted  that  he  was  a  deserter  from  the 
Navy  at  San  Francisco.  He  wanted  to  go  into  the  house 
after  some  letter  paper,  but  the  operative  would  not  let  him. 
Afterwards  he  said  he  wanted  to  go  in  to  get  a  gun,  and 
would  have  shot  the  operative  rather  than  go  with  him.  Re- 
turned to  San  Francisco  from  Los  Angeles  jail. 

A  carload  of  A.  P.  L.  men  went  out  to  a  deserted  spot 
in  the  San  Fernando  Valley  near  the  Los  Angeles  aqueduct. 
A  mysterious  German  had  been  seen  about,  possibly  with 
evil  intent.  Operatives  surrounded  a  small  cabin  which  was 
occupied  by  a  very  arrogant  German  and  two  women.  The 
man  on  the  case  reports:  ''  I  noticed  a  big  revolver  on  the 
dresser,  secured  it  and  put  it  in  my  pocket  before  we  went 
on  with  the  investigation.  We  went  through  all  his  letters, 
mostly  in  German,  but  discovered  nothing  in  the  way  of  evi- 
dence. We  told  him  w^hy  we  had  come  and  warned  him  to 
keep  away  from  the  aqueduct.  He  took  it  all  very  submis- 
sively, so  I  thought  it  would  be  all  right  to  leave  the  revolver 
which  I  had  captured.  When  I  took  it  out  of  my  pocket  to 
look  it  over,  I  found  that  it  was  empty,  the  hammer  had 
been  knocked  off  and  it  could  not  have  been  fired.  But 
*  *  you  will  note, ' '  writes  the  operative  with  an  exultant  note, 
**  that  I  responded  fully  to  the  demands  of  the  occasion  in 
the  way  of  bravery!  " 

A  case  came  down  from  Seattle  to  Los  Angeles,  having 
to  do  w^ith  an  itinerant  slacker  who  came  from  Penn- 
sylvania and  who,  since  then,  had  lived  in  Idaho,  Washing- 
ton, and  California.  The  suspect's  physical  description  was 
that  of  a  man  six  feet  tall,  weight  about  220  pounds,  health 
apparently  the  best,  appearance  very  shabby,  an  additional 
circumstance  being  that  he  had  a  pronounced  aversion  to  the 
use  of  water  which  was  very  evident  at  close  range.  Tt  was 
stated  that  the  man  owned  at  least  nine  different  properties, 
and  although  indolent,  was  apparently  well  to  do.  He  was 
found  in  possession  of  Socialist  literature,  and  declared  that 
he  would  not  buy  bonds  or  assist  the  Government  or  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  Red  Cross.     He  was  asked  how  he 


344  THE  WEB 

would  like  to  join  the  Army.  Since  he  did  not  like  the  prop- 
osition, he  was  arrested  for  violation  of  the  Selective  Service 
Act,  found  within  the  age,  and  indicted  September  20,  1918, 
by  the  Federal  Grand  Jury  for  failure  to  register  for  the 
draft. 

Los  Angeles  had  a  practicing  physician  who  fled  from 
Germany  to  escape  the  rigors  of  its  military  laws.  When 
war  broke  out  between  this  country  and  Germany,  this  sus- 
pect—  for  he  very  soon  became  a  suspect  and  was  placed 
under  the  espionage  of  A.  P.  L. —  planned  to  turn  a  pretty 
penny  by  the  practice  of  sabotage,  not  upon  property,  but  on 
personnel.  There  were  some  cowards  in  this  country  of  so 
yellow  a  type  that  they  were  willing  even  to  have  their  eye- 
sight tampered  with  that  they  might  escape  the  draft.  This 
monster  in  human  guise  assisted  such  depraved  beings,  some- 
times perhaps  to  the  permanent  loss  of  their  eye-sight  — 
they  took  their  own  chances.  This  man  got  a  sentence  of  ten 
years  in  the  penitentiary  and  a  fine  of  $5,000.  A  woman 
accomplice  was  sentenced  to  eleven  years  penal  servitude. 

A  German,  von  B ,  was  a  close  friend  of  R.  B , 

the  two  rooming  together.  The  latter  was  with  the  National 
Guard  of  California  in  the  Mexican  trouble,  was  mustered 
out,  but  registered  for  the  draft,  being  exempted  on  the 
grounds  of  having  a  dependent  wife  and  child.     After  he  had 

received  his  exemption,  B was  told  by  von  B to 

get  into  the  Aviation  Corps  at  San  Diego,  and  that  he  would 
show  him  how.  The  exempted  man  was  admitted  to  the 
Aviation  Corps  in  the  United  States  Army,  went  to  Berkeley 
for  three  months'  training,  and  then  was  transferred  to  San 
Diego.  He  is  a  German  and  his  wife  is  also.  These  two 
men  were  reported  to  have  made  a  great  many  mysterious 
trips  together.  Subject  was  interned  on  presidential  war- 
rant, it  being  obvious  that  neither  he  nor  his  room-mate 
meant  well  towards  the  United  States. 

Can  a  leopard  change  his  spots?     The  answer  would  ap- 
pear to  be  that  he  cannot  —  if  he  is  a  German  leopard.     For 

instance,  one  William  S ,  a  German  small  grocer  in 

Los  Angeles,  was  doing  a  good  business  and  living  very  well. 
He  had  a  son  enlisted  in  the  Aviation  Corps  of  the  United 
States  Army  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  There  was  no 
reason  why  he,  himself,  should  not  have  remained  loyal  to 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  345 

this  country,  which  had  been  kind  to  him.  But  although  he 
had  been  away  from  Germany  for  a  score  of  years,  he  was 
foolish  enough  to  retain  all  the  German  spots.  He  said  that 
Wilson  was  a  Kaiser  and  that  the  people  ought  to  kill  him ; 
and  he  uttered  a  good  many  additional  sentiments  of  like 
sort  against  this  country  and  its  Government.  He  was  so 
bitter  in  his  pro-German  attitude  that  he  lost  practically  all 
of  his  customers.  As  a  result  he  began  to  worry,  not  only 
for  the  Imperial  German  Government,  but  for  himself.  And 
then  one  night  he  died  —  which  closed  the  case  for  A.  P.  L. 
and  opened  it  for  a  Higher  Court.  Since  it  has  been  shown 
in  many  instances  that  the  River  Jordan  has  not  been  able 
to  wash  out  the  German  spots,  the  query  is  whether  the  River 
Styx  is  any  more  able  to  do  so?  That  is  the  question  in 
which  all  admirers  of  German  Kultur  and  its  practices  are 
interested. 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  Santa  Barbara 

There  is  an  unsettled  rivalry  between  the  two  types  of 
beauty,  blonde  and  brunette,  which  never  will  be  concluded 
so  long  as  women  live  and  men  admire  them.  So  also,  one 
supposes,  time  will  not  last  long  enough  to  determine  which 
is  the  more  beautiful  and  lovable  spot — Monterey  in  North- 
ern California,  or  Santa  Barbara  in  the  South.  You  can 
start  a  riot  over  that  question  on  any  railway  train  on  the 
Pacific  slope.  One  man  will  be  ready  to  shoot  anybody  who 
does  not  agree  that  the  Seventeen  Mile  Drive  out  of  Monterey 
is  the  most  beautiful  region  in  all  the  world,  bar  none.  It 
is  —  it  is!  Who  can  deny  it?  But  who,  also,  can  deny 
even  at  the  point  of  a  gun  that  the  Santa  Barbara  coast  is 
also  the  most  beautiful  spot  in  all  the  world?  Besides,  the 
latter  community  has  scientific  records  as  ground  for  the 
assertion  that  Santa  Barbara  has  the  finest  mean  temperature 
on  the  North  American  continent,  and  hence  is  the  one  ideal 
dwelling  spot  for  human  beings.     It  is  —  it  is! 

But,  very  naturally,  so  fair  a  region  as  that  of  the  Cali- 
fornia slope  must  have  attracted  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men,  evil  men  as  well  as  good,  designing  transients  as  well 
as  those  calling  California  home.  For  this  reason  Santa 
Barbara  also  had  her  organization  of  the  A.  P.  L. 


346  THE  WEB 

One  of  the  colony  of  wealthy  men  who  had  built  palatial 
homes  in  and  around  Santa  Barbara  was  a  certain  millionaire 
who  had  what  might  be  called  advanced  ideas  or  free  think- 
ing tendencies.  Early  in  the  year  1917,  Mr.  H asso- 
ciated himself  actively  with  the  pacifist  movement.  He  had, 
as  a  co-agitator,  a  reverend  doctor  who  was  pastor  in  a 
church  at  Santa  Barbara.  They  both  printed  pamphlets  in 
opposition  to  the  war,  and  finally  came  out  with  a  book 
which  was  a  very  violent  denunciation  of  war  in  general. 
The  two  gentlemen  divided  the  authorship  of  this  book, 
H doing  the  first  part  and  G the  second.  Rev- 
erend G had  the  advantage  of  also  being  able  to  de- 
liver sermons  from  the  pulpit.  He  denounced  the  United 
States  Government  and  referred  to  the  American  flag  as  a 
**  worthless  rag."  After  we  had  declared  war  with  Ger- 
many these  men  kept  on  with  their  activities,  hence  A.  P.  L. 
took  their  cases  under  advisement  with  instructions  from  the 
Los  Angeles  Department  of  Justice.  There  were  hundreds 
of  operative  reports  turned  in  on  these  two  men. 

After  a  time  another  book,  published  by  H ,  came 

out  —  a  very  violent  arraignment  of  the  Government  for 
its  stand  in  the  war,  and  very  hot  anti-draft  literature.  These 

publications   attracted  to   H and    G a  large 

number  of  the  weak-minded  people  who  affiliated  themselves 
with  the  ' '  Fellowship  of  Reconcilation  "  —  a  society  which 
ought  to  go  strong  in  Berlin,  now  that  the  war  is  over. 

Reverend  G was  expelled  as  the  pastor  of  his  church, 

following  a  very  seditious  letter  which  he  wrote,  saying  that 
he  had  relegated  the  American  flag  to  the  flames,  express- 
ing sympathy  with  I.  W.  W.,  and  opposition  to  the  draft. 
It  has  always  been  understood  that  the  climate  of  California 
attracted  a  great  many  people,  and  the  state  has  always 
seemed  to  be  prolific  of  great  differences  of  opinion  among 
those  people,  but  when  it  comes  to  a  minister  of  the  gospel 
uttering  such  things  as  these,  it  is  going  a  little  strong  even 
for  the  most  free-thinking  country  in  the  world. 

The   H case  kept  on   attaining  proportions,   and 

heavy  shipments  of  literature  were  made  into  Santa  Barbara 
and  distributed  out  of  that  city  to  various  points.  All  of 
these  shipments  were  followed  and  full  reports  were  made. 
In  the  latter  part  of   1917,   another  reverend   doctor,   F. 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  347 

H ,  and  one  C.  H.  B ,  became  active  associates 

with  the  foregoing.  Pacifist  meetings  in  Los  Angeles  were 
raided,  and  all  these  parties  managed  to  get  themselves 
arrested  on  a  charge  of  disturbing  the  peace. 

In  April,  1918,  a  letter  addressed  to  a  man  in  Santa  Bar- 
bara, California,  who  had  a  name  quite  similar  to  the  first 
man  above  mentioned,  fell  into  the  hands  of  A.  P.  L.,  because 
the  wrong  recipient  had  opened  it.  It  was  found  to  be  a  let- 
ter from  the  secretary  of  the  I.  W.  W.  organization  at  Los 
Angeles,  setting  a  definite  date  for  a  meeting  at  Los  Angeles 
where  Mr.  H was  to  be  present  and  address  the  as- 
sembled multitude.  The  Chief  of  A.  P.  L.  at  Santa  Barbara 
notified  D.  J.  in  Los  Angeles.  At  the  same  time,  Santa 
Barbara  was  requested  to  locate  the  new  reverend,  Mr. 
F.  H ,  whose  whereabouts  now  were  unknown. 

There  now  came  into  the  case  a  Miss  E ,  a  prominent 

young  woman  who  had  been  a  canteen  worker  and  Red 
Cross  nurse  in  France.     Her  family  were  friends  of  the 

H family,  but  Miss  E was  a  friend  of  the 

United  States  Army  above  all  things.  She  learned  that  the 
second  reverend  was  at  Modesto,  California,  and  that  Mr. 

H would  leave  Santa  Barbara  on  Sunday,  April  7,  for 

Los  Angeles;  that  he  would  stop  at  the  Alexandria  Hotel, 
and  would  address  the  meeting  on  April  8. 

This  information  was  turned  over  to  D.  J.  at  Los  Angeles. 

It  was  decided  to  arrest  all  the  foregoing  alphabetical  gen- 
tlemen. About  twenty  members  were  assigned  to  the  work 
and  these  arrests  were  duly  made  at  9  :00  P.  M.  on  the  night 
of  April  8.  Certain  residences  of  the  above  parties  were 
searched  and  an  immense  amount  of  literature  and  pamph- 
lets on  pacifism  and  radical  Socialism  were  discovered.  Most 
of  the  books  were  seized. 

The  first  mentioned  Mr.  H was  hard  to  catch,  the 

deputy  marshal  being  obliged  to  chase  him   through  the 

streets  of  Los  Angeles  for  several  blocks.     H had  to 

spend  his  night  in  the  county  jail.  The  next  morning  he 
telephoned  to  his  mother  that  he  had  "  spent  the  night  with 
some  friends  of  his,  the  Marshalls."  At  least,  he  had  a  sense 
of  humor,  because  the  only  ''  Marshals  "  he  knew  were  the 
deputy  United  States  marshals  at  that  time,  and  he  had  in- 
deed been  their  guest  temporarily. 


348  THE  WEB 

All  the  defendants,  excepting  two  incidentally  connected 
with  the  case,  were  convicted  of  violation  of  the  Espionage 
Act.  The  wealthy  pacifist  millionaire  was  fined  $27,000.  The 
vitriolic  clergyman  first  mentioned,  and  his  ally,  the  clergy- 
man of  the  second  part,  were  fined  $5,000  apiece.  Two 
lesser  fines  of  $500  and  $100  were  imposed  also.  The 
second  reverend  doctor  w^as  arrested  on  information  fur- 
nished by  Santa  Barbara  A.  P.  L.  to  the  Los  Angeles  office. 
Other  persons  of  ultra-pacifist  tendencies  in  Santa  Barbara 
have  been  kept  constantly  under  surveillance.  So  it  would 
seem  that  in  peaceful  Santa  Barbara  all  is  not  always  peace 

—  unless  it  is  the  right  sort  of  peace. 

Santa  Barbara  made  twenty-three  arrests  and  secured  fif- 
teen convictions.  Fines  Avere  collected  by  the  Government 
through  A.  P.  L.  investigations  amounting  to  $37,100.  Santa 
Barbara  had  the  usual  percentage  of  flivver  cases,  especially 
as  to  mysterious  signal  lights.  One  of  these  proved  to  be 
nothing  more  dangerous  than  a  night  watchman  on  a  rail- 
road track,  signalling  with  his  lantern.  The  operatives  un- 
covered one  rather  tragic  case.  A  Franciscan  monk  wrote 
to  the  draft  board  that  his  own  brother  claimed  exemption 
falsely,  that  he  was  living  with  another  man's  wife,  and  had 
been  guilty  of  forgery.  The  couple  were  found  making  their 
confession.  They  confessed  further  before  the  draft  board 
that  they  both  were  married  but  had  separated  from  their 
respective  mates.  They  fell  in  love  and  began  living  to- 
gether within  two  weeks  after  they  had  met,  and  they  had 
lived  together  as  man  and  wife  for  some  time.  The  woman 
was  released ;  the  man  was  inducted  into  the  service  and  sent 
to  camp. 

A  Santa  Barbara  operative  evinced  a  certain  sleuthing 
ability  in  a  case  which  reached  its  climax  when  someone 
blew  up  an  old  barn  at  the  rear  of  the  place  belonging  to 
the  complaining  couple.  There  was  a  box  containing  a  set- 
ting hen,  malignantly  maternal  over  thirteen  eggs.  This  box 
was  within  six  feet  of  the  place  where  the  explosion  occurred 

—  but  there  was  not  a  mark  on  the  box,  although  the  barn 
door  had  been  blown  to  bits.  It  seemed  that  something  was 
wrong.  Matters  simmered  down  to  a  spite  case  of  a  middle 
aged  couple  against  some  neighbors,  who  finally  had  deter- 
mined to  get  their  kind  of  justice  by  blowing  up  their  own 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  349 

bani  —  but  they  did  not  wish  to  blow  up  their  valuable  hen, 
so  they  removed  her  before  touching  off  the  charge. 

Santa  Barbara  County  —  not  the  town  —  reported  94 
cases  of  disloyalty  and  sedition,  24  male  alien  activities  and 
20  female  alien  enemies,  besides  the  34  I.  W.  W.  cases.  The 
man  does  not  live  who  can  predict  the  end  of  all  the  vast 
social  problems  which  will  have  to  be  worked  out  eventually 
on  this  beautiful  Pacific  slope. 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  San  Diego 

We  have  on  our  southern  borders  the  Mexican  situation, 
not  yet  settled,  but  one  day  to  be  settled.  Germany  did  all 
she  could  to  set  Mexico  on  our  heels,  and  her  atrocious  Zim- 
merman note  was  one  more  instance  of  her  venomous  but 
blundering  diplomacy.  Perhaps  she  wonders  still  how  we 
got  that  note  when  it  first  was  despatched  from  Mexico; 
and  how  we  sat  tight  so  long  with  knowledge  of  it  in  our 
possession.  This  is  by  way  of  saying  that  the  old  Spanish 
city  of  San  Diego  is  an  important  naval  base,  located  close 
to  the  edge  of  the  intriguing  border  of  the  Southwest  —  and 
a  borderland  is  always  a  zone  of  espionage. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  surprising  to  say  that  San  Diego  had 
65  cases  of  alien  enemy  activities  and  842  cases  of  disloyalty 
and  sedition,  286  instances  of  propaganda  and  32  I.  W.  W. 
cases.  For  the  War  Department,  there  were  554  investiga- 
tions, 98  of  these  being  character  and  loyalty  investigations. 
So  that,  on  the  whole,  it  may  be  seen  that  this  once  indolent 
city  of  the  Southwest,  now  a  busy  center  of  affairs,  also 
had  an  A.  P.  L.  during  the  war. 

There  is  a  curious  range  of  cases  reported  from  one  and 
another  corner  of  the  country  to  the  National  Directors  of 
A.  P.  L.  Sometimes  an  extraordinarily  troublesome  case  has 
had  very  little  at  bottom;  and  again  a  simple  case  often 
turned  out  big.  Yet  again,  a  case  might  have  all  the  ear- 
marks of  simplicity  and  prove  full  of  trouble.  For  instance, 
if  you  were  sent  to  arrest  a  woman,  you  customarily  would 
not  expect  her  to  disclose  herself  to  be  a  walking  arsenal 
of  offensive  weapons  —  a  woman's  portative  appliances, 
lacking  pockets  as  they  do,  not  seeming  to  give  her  natural 
facilities  for  heeling  herself  in  any  way  practical  for  quick 


350 


THE  WEB 


action.  Such,  however,  proved  to  be  a  wrong  estimate  of  a 
certain  young  lady  whom  we  may  call  Miss  M.  E ,  re- 
ported in  connection  with  certain  alleged  *'  German  activ- 
ity. ' '     She  certainly  turned  out  to  be  active. 

An  operative  found  Miss  M.  E living  in  a  garage 

about  six  feet  square.  The  room  was  in  much  disorder,  show- 
ing trunks,  boxes,  tin  cans  and  literature  all  about.  Some 
ammunition  was  found,  which  the  operative  left  in  place. 
He  did  not  open  the  trunk.  Suspect  was  reported  sometimes 
around  a  print  shop,  which  next  was  visited.  The  proprietor 
said  that  the  suspect  sometimes  did  some  printing  herself  in 
his  little  shop.  Neighbors  seemed  to  be  afraid  of  suspect, 
and  said  she/  had  been  seen  with  a  revolver  in  her  coat 
pocket. 

Operative  interviewed  the  suspect  herself  and  asked  her 
how  about  the  literature  she  had  been  printing.  She  admit- 
ted she  had  distributed  about  one  hundred  copies  of  a  cir- 
cular. We  may  at  this  point  allow  the  operative  to  tell  his 
simple  and  uneventful  story  in  his  own  words. 

I  then  told  her  we  had  a  search  warrant,  but  she  had 
better  come  down  to  the  Federal  Agent.  She  refused,  sajung 
she  had  work  to  do  and  must  get  it  out.  I  told  her  we  had  a 
car  outside  and  would  bring  her  back  to  her  print  shop,  but 
she  still  refused.  I  then  told  her  I  w^ould  walk  down  with 
her  to  the  print  shop  and  then  we  could  talk  over  the  'phone 
and  get  more  instructions.  When  we  arrived  at  the  print 
shop,  which  is  about  eight  feet  square,  I  told  Operative  No.  9 

to  go  into  the  house  and  call  up  Mr.  W ,  Federal  Agent, 

and  ask  for  instructions.  Being  warned  by  the  neighbors  that 
subject  carried  a  gun,  I  went  into  the  printing  shop  and  asked 
her  if  she  did  carry  a  gun.  She  immediately  became  enraged 
and  rushed  for  her  leather  grip  and  pulled  out  a  .38-Colt,  fully 
loaded.  I  made  a  grab  at  her,  and  after  a  tussle  obtained 
possession  of  the  weapon.  While  putting  this  gun  in  my 
pocket,  she  obtained  a  hammer  and  was  endeavoring  to  hit 
me  over  the  head,  and  also  at  the  same  time  calling  for 
assistance.  I  now  called  Operative  No.  9  from  the  house,  and 
between  us,  we  obtained  the  hammer.  But  in  some  manner 
she  pulled  from  her  clothes  a  .32-automatic  revolver  and  then 
endeavored  to  shoot  us  if  possible.  Operative  No.  9  and  myself 
overpowered  her  and  took  this  gun  from  her. 

We  proceeded  to  take  subject  to  the  car,  which  was  about 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  35I 

half  a  block  away.  She  continually  screamed,  "Help!  Help! 
Won't  someone  help  a  good  Protestant?"  We  finally  got  her 
in  the  car,  and  then  I  sent  Operative  No.  9  back  after  my  hat, 
her  bag,  and  the  search  warrant,  which  we  had  dropped.  I 
stood  outside  the  car,  holding  subject  by  one  arm,  when  she 
drew  a  knife  from  her  bosom  and  slashed  at  my  hand.  I  got 
in  the  car  and  we  tussled  again,  and  I  finally  got  the  knife 
away  from  her.  I  had  just  thrown  the  knife  over  into  the 
front  seat  of  the  automobile  when  she  drew  a  small  dirk 
from  her  bosom.  Between  Operative  No.  9,  who  had  come 
back,  and  myself,  we  got  this  dirk  away  from  her,  slightly 
cutting  her  hand.  We  then  thought  it  would  be  best  to  have 
a  witness  as  to  what  was  going  on,  and  seeing  a  man  standing 
looking  at  us,  we  called  him.  Upon  noticing  ^me  women 
standing  at  the  corner  watching  us,  I  thought  it  would  be 
better  to  have  them  come  and  search  her,  and  upon  calling 
them  they  came  over.  I  told  them  what  I  wanted  them  to  do 
and  they  asked  if  it  would  be  safe,  and  told  them  yes — by 
this  time.  I  explained  who  we  were  and  what  we  were  doing, 
and  asked  them  to  search  subject  and  they  agreed  to  do  so. 
During  their  search  they  found  a  pocket  containing  ten  bullets, 
sewed  on  to  her  petticoat,  an  8-inch  Bowie  knife,  and  also 
another  revolver,  a  Colt  .41,  fully  loaded. 

Nothing  much  further  seemed  to  disturb  the  calm  of  the 
scene,  so  the  operators  took  the  lady  to  the  county  jail, 
where  she  was  later  turned  over  for  examination  to  the  De- 
partment of  Justice.  The  two  operatives  then  went  back  to 
the  subject's  room  and  found  in  every  conceivable  place  am- 
munition of  every  description.  It  was  sewed  in  the  mat- 
tress, stuffed  in  tin  cans,  concealed  in  her  trunk.  There 
were  also  found  a  Winchester  repeating  rifle  and  a  Reming- 
ton repeating  rifle,  and  ammunition  in  all  amounting  to 
about  1,000  rounds.  When  her  hand-grip  was  searched  at 
the  office,  it  was  found  to  contain  four  tobacco  pouches  of 
bullets,  sixty-six  in  all,  and  a  full  clip  of  .32-caliber  bullets. 
In  the  garage  where  the  lady  lived,  some  bottles  were  found 
and  some  cans  containing  powder,  which  were  taken  away 
for  analysis. 

The  District  Attorney  recognized  in  Miss  M.  E a 

woman  who  had  been  tried  twice  for  insanity,  having  been 
sent  once  to  an  asylum.  She  was  committed  to  the  State 
Asylum  at  Patton,  and  the  authorities  there  were  notified 


352  THE  WEB 

that  in  case  of  her  future  release  she  should  be  kept  under 
surveillance.     Thus  endeth  the  first  lesson,  about  Miss  M. 

E .    If  she  had  had  more  money,  probably  she  would 

have  bought  more  guns.  A  pleasant  day's  work  for  men  not 
on  anybody's  pay  roll. 

San  Diego  had  another  case  which  kept  the  local  division 
going  for  a  time.  Among  its  operatives  was  a  crippled  news- 
boy who  once  belonged  to  the  Army.  This  lad  had  both  his 
legs  cut  off  in  a  railroad  accident  as  he  was  changing  from 
one  train  to  another,  on  his  way  to  a  new  army  post.  To 
make  a  livelihood,  he  took  up  a  newsboy's  occupation  and 
became  a  familiar  figure  on  the  sidewalks.  He  had  a  board 
to  which  he  fastened  a  pair  of  roller  skates,  and  by  means 
of  a  small  block  of  wood  he  learned  to  push  himself  along 
the  sidewalks  at  a  very  good  rate  of  speed.  It  came  to 
the  attention  of  the  division  that  this  newsboy  was  a  very 
keen  observer  and  it  was  known  he  had  a  knowledge  of  six 
languages.  He  was  enrolled  and  became  very  useful  —  in- 
deed he  was  at  the  bottom  of  one  of  the  biggest  and  most 
dangerous  cases  San  Diego  ever  had;  which  shows  that  no 
crippled  soldiers  ought  ever  to  despair. 

The  crippled  newsboy  ate  in  a  certain  restaurant,  and 
there  by  chance  he  overheard  a  conversation  between  some 
Mexicans.  He  got  a  mass  of  information  and  turned  it  into 
the  office,  where  a  report  was  made  to  the  Navy  Department, 
which  later  ferreted  out  a  plot  that  was  laid  in  Mexico. 
With  no  more  than  this  passing  mention  of  the  A.  P.  L.  oper- 
ative who,  like  so  many  others,  gets  small  glory  beyond  the 
reward  of  his  own  conscience,  some  mention  may  be  made 
of  this  plot,  which  really  involved  the  extensive  machina- 
tions of  Germans  in  Mexico  against  the  United  States.  It 
ended  in  the  capture  by  the  United  States  vessels  of  the  Hun 
raider  Alexander  Agassiz. 

A  young  woman  owned  the  Agassiz,  but  had  not  been  able 
to  make  much  money  out  of  it,  and  so  sold  it  to  one  Fritz 

B ,  once  a  German  naval  reservist  and  for  a  time  chief 

officer  on  a  German  ship  interned  at  Santa  Rosalia.  At 
another  period  in  his  career  he  had  been  interned  at  Angel 
Island  as  an  alien  enemy.  At  any  rate,  he  made  his  way 
to  Santa  Rosalia,  and  thence  to  Matzatlan,  where  he  got  in 
touch  with  the  German  Consul.    B was  sent  to  Mexico 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  353 

City  for  a  conference  with  the  German  Ambassador  there. 
There  were  Germans  from  all  parts  of  Mexico  who  ap- 
peared  at   that   meeting.     When   B came   back,   he 

sought  out  the  acquaintance  of  the  young  woman  who  owned 
the  boat  and  induced  her  to  sell  it  to  him.  The  boat  then 
was  hauled  out  and  thoroughly  overhauled  by  German  sailors 
who  had  arrived  from  the  fleet  of  German  ships  at  Santa 
Rosalia.  The  hull  was  calked,  new  sails  were  bent  on,  the 
machinery  was  overhauled,  and  in  general  the  boat  was  made 
ready  for  her  career  as  a  raider. 

In  the  meantime  B obtained  full  armament  and  in- 
struments for  his  ship.  He  had  some  of  his  arms  on  an 
island  seven  miles  northwest  of  Matzatlan,  but  he  rest  of 
the  equipment  was  taken  aboard  the  Agassiz.  This  was 
carried  on  openly  and  the  news  got  out  to  the  American 
Patrol  Fleet.  A  cruiser  put  in  an  appearance  off  the  mouth 
of  Matzatlan  Harbor.  Hence,  instead  of  sailing  out  with 
a  crew  of  twenty  Germans,  only  five  Germans  were  put 
aboard  the  Agassiz,  with  two  American  women  and  six  Mex- 
icans.    B figured  that  the  boat  would  be  taken  as  a 

harmless  trader  and  allowed  to  go  out.  He  guessed  wrong. 
The  Agassiz  made  a  dash  for  the  open  sea.  But  by  this 
time  wireless  had  brought  up  two  other  American  warships. 
They  closed  in  on  the  incipient  raider  and  signaled  her  to 
heave  to.  Not  being  obeyed,  they  planted  a  shell  in  front 
of  the  raider's  bow,  which  brought  her  up. 

Before  the  naval  men  could  get  aboard  the  Agassiz,  her 
crew  worked  as  hard  as  they  could  to  throw  overboard  every- 
thing of  an  incriminating  nature.  Thej^  also  tried  to  wreck 
the  engine  and  destroy  the  bearings  in  the  magneto.  The 
blue-jackets  found  some  rifles  and  revolvers,  some  German 
flags  and  a  secret  cipher.     From  the  papers  it  was  learned 

that  B was  in  hiding  at  Venados  Island.     This  was 

on  Mexican  soil,  so  he  could  not  be  seized. 

It  was  learned  that  the  German  Consul  at  Matzatlan  had 
forced  all  the  crew  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the 

Kaiser.     He  had  instructed  B to   capture  speedier 

boats,  and  after  raiding  Pacific  shipping  to  work  the  South- 
ern Pacific,  thence  to  go  by  the  west  coast  of  Africa  and 
north  on  a  dash  for  some  German  port,  so  that  he  might 
send  to  Wilhelmstrasse  —  Germany 's  Scotland  Yard  —  the 


354  THE  WEB 

package  of  papers  entrusted  to  him  by  the  Mexican  German 
ambassador. 

Had  this  raider  gotten  into  the  open  seas  and  taken  captive 
a  faster  and  better  equipped  ship,  it  might  have  done  a  very 
considerable  damage  to  shipping,  just  as  did  the  several 
German  raiders  which  for  a  time  harrassed  the  Allied  com- 
merce. That  her  career  was  stopped  at  the  outset  was  due 
to  the  keenness  of  a  legless  newsboy,  anxious  to  do  his  bit 
for  the  country  whose  uniform  he  once  had  worn.  There  is 
enough,  let  us  repeat,  in  this  very  story  to  give  hope  to  every 
crippled  soldier  coming  back  from  France  —  for  this,  taken 
in  all  its  bearings,  was  about  as  important  a  piece  of  work 
as  this  busy  division  had,  and  is  one  of  the  biggest  of  all 
the  A.  P.  L.  cases. 

The  A.  P.  L.  did  not  disband  at  the  signing  of  the  Armis- 
tice, and  it  is  well  that  it  did  not.  San  Diego,  like  many 
another  city,  has  had  more  than  its  share  of  bootlegging  and 
vice  investigations  to  carry  on,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
growing  feeling  of  license,  which  had  developed  since  the 
Armistice,  had  spread  among  our  troops.  Among  those  quar- 
tered near  San  Diego,  there  were,  of  course,  some  not  above 
reproach,  and  the  bootlegger  was  known  here  as  elsewhere. 
This  pleasant  and  peaceful  town  in  the  sun-kissed  South  also 
had  its  share  of  the  German-born.  It  w^ould  take  a  Luther 
Burbank,  perhaps,  to  change  them,  and  even  Luther  '  *  would 
need  time." 

There  was  one  man  of  great  wealth  naturalized  in  Cali- 
fornia in  1898,  who  held  a  prominent  position  in  San  Diego 
business  life.  He  was  known  to  have  been  in  close  touch 
with  all  the  famous  Germans,  and  had  a  pretty  good  insight 
into  affairs  American  and  Mexican.  When  we  went  into  the 
war,  this  suspect  became  distinctly  pro-German  and  was  one 
of  the  most  active  propagandists  along  the  border,  apparently 
entirely  forgetful  of  the  fact  that  he  owed  allegiance  to  the 
United  States.  Being  well  acquainted  with  the  German  popu- 
lation in  Mexico,  he  and  others  are  alleged  to  have  aided  in 
the  establishment  of  a  wireless  plant  in  Mexico,  and  to  have 
financed  people  who  ought  not  to  have  been  financed,  in 
view  of  their  past  records.  It  was  charged  against  him  by 
fellow-citizens  that  he  worked  to  some  extent  with  German 
money;  that  he  was  connected,  at  least  indirectly,  with  the 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  355 

Hindu  plot  case,  and  that  he  knew  more  than  he  should 
about  the  illicit  shipment  of  arms  in  the  Annie  Larson  steam- 
ship case.  In  fact,  he  was  charged  rather  openly  with 
having  been  interested  in  the  German  efforts  to  give  aid  to 
the  ship  Maverick  in  the  Pacific  Ocean.  The  wireless  plant 
in  Mexico  was  located  and  wrecked,  which  spoiled  the  at- 
tempts of  an  enemy  clique  to  establish  wireless  communica- 
tion between  Mexico  and  German  ships  in  Honolulu. 

This  same  man  was  linked  with  the  scheme  of  buying  arms 
in  New  York  and  shipping  them  via  San  Diego  into  Mexico. 
British  Military  Intelligence  also  charged  this  man  with 
being  head  and  front  of  the  most  complete  pro-German 
organization  in  that  part  of  the  world.  He  was  charged 
with  delivering  coal  from  San  Diego  to  a  German  steam- 
ship. The  British  Government  and  that  of  the  United  States 
joined  hands  in  following  out  this  pro-German  citizen  of 
America.  He  was  traced  to  Europe  and  found  to  have 
gone  to  Berlin  instead  of  to  Paris.  He  was  alleged  to  be 
guilty  of  fraudulent  transactions  at  an  Army  post,  and  a 
man  connected  with  him  in  his  operations  has  been  con- 
victed. He  succeeded  in  getting  his  son  and  son-in-law 
exempted  from  the  draft,  and  attempted  to  get  his  son  a 
commission  in  the  Quartermaster  Department.  For  months 
United  States  agents  from  various  departments  have  been 
after  this  man,  recording  every  move  he  made.  Finally  a 
joint  meeting  of  the  several  agents  of  the  United  States, 
gathered  in  San  Diego,  decided  that  the  time  was  ripe  to 
get  out  a  search  warrant  and  go  through  his  place  of  busi- 
ness, his  safety  deposit  box,  and  his  residence.  Just  then 
there  came  a  change  in  the  personnel  of  D.  J.  —  and  after 
this  adjustment  the  Armistice  ended  it  all!  The  investiga- 
tion, therefore,  is  not  closed  at  this  writing,  and  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice  is  still  on  the  trail  of  this  disloyal  "  Amer- 
ican." He  is  one  of  a  great  many  of  his  type  claiming 
citizenship  in  this  country. 

It  would  seem  that  after  a  native  of  Germany  had  passed 
forty-two  years  in  the  United  States,  he  would  learn  to 
feel  a  certain  pride  and  appreciation  of  the  benefits  he  had 
enjoyed  here.  That  was  not  always  the  case  —  certainly  it 
was  not  true  in  the  instance  of  the  gentleman  who  is  filed 
away  as  Case  No.  392.    This  worthy  had  abused  the  Allies 


356  THE  WEB 

in  language  too  foul  to  print,  and  seemed  to  think  that  no 
one  in  this  country  would  resent  anything  he  said.  When 
called  down  by  a  lo^^al  citizen,  he  dared  anybody  to  make 
him  stop  talking.  He  said  that  England  started  the  war 
and  had  an  agreement  with  Belgium  whereby  England  could 
go  through  Belgium  in  order  to  strike  at  Germany.  He 
said  England  sunk  a  great  many  boats  and  then  blamed  it  on 
the  German  submarines.  He  said  that  England  sent  one 
hundred  and  fifty  newspaper  men  here  to  write  up  stories 
against  the  Germans;  that  he  hoped  the  submarines  would 
blow  up  every  damned  American  boat  on  the  ocean,  and  sink 
all  the  transports  and  ships  carrying  munitions;  that  the 
men  the  Yankees  had  in  France  in  March,  1918,  did  not 
amount  to  anything;  that  the  United  States  couldn't  make 

him  fight;  that  this Government  was  rotten  to 

the  core.  He  made  other  remarks  of  like  violent  nature, 
and  his  remarks  against  the  President  of  the  United  States 
were  coupled  with  such  language  that  swift  hanging  would 
really  have  been  about  the  only  just  punishment  for  him. 
He  was  arrested  and  undertook  to  deny  the  remarks  re- 
ported against  him.  The  jury  found  him  guilty.  He  was 
sent  to  prison  for  three  years.  He  ought  by  all  means  to  be 
deported  when  he  gets  out  of  jail,  and  so  ought  any  German 
in  this  country  who  has  been  found  at  any  time  to  be  guilty 
of  any  such  talk.  We  do  not  need  that  sort  of  '*  citizens  " 
in  America,  and  we  are  not  going  to  have  them  here. 

There  was  another  case,  No.  300,  in  peaceful  San  Diego, 
in  which  the  suspect  seemed  anxious  to  spread  broadcast 
every  manner  of  pro-German  propaganda.  He  had  been  a 
naturalized  citizen  of  this  country  for  twenty  years,  and 
through  his  position  in  one  of  the  city  banks,  he  had  been 
closely  associated  with  many  of  San  Diego's  leading  busi- 
ness men.  Yet,  still  deep  in  his  heart  was  that  love  for  the 
Fatherland  which  made  him  willing  to  fight  this  free  coun- 
try where  he  claimed  citizenship  and  where  he  had  all  the 
benefits  of  our  too  weakly-lenient  Government.  It  finally 
dawned  on  the  minds  of  some  of  the  customers  of  the  bank 
that  this  man  was  not  right.  A.  P.  L.  was  called  on  to 
investigate  him  and  worked  on  the  case  for  months.  The 
man  was  finally  taken  into  custody,  and  the  issue  was  joined 
between  the  United  States  Government  on  the  one  hand  and 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  357 

this  suspect  and  his  influential  friends  on  the  other.  A  long 
trial  was  had  and  the  jury  disagreed.  A  second  trial  came 
off  and  A.  P.  L.  had  fifty  witnesses  ready  to  testify.  The 
result  was  a  conviction  and  a  sentence  of  four  years  at  Mc- 
Neill's Island.  Truly,  anyone  reading  the  San  Diego  cases 
must  agree  that  that  division  did  not  lack  in  energy  and 
diligence. 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  Pasadena 

Life  is  so  idyllic  in  Pasadena  —  roses  —  oranges  —  that 
sort  of  thing  that  you  would  not  suspect  that  anything  evil 
could  happen  there,  or  that  anyone  ever  could  suspect  any- 
one else  in  those  select  surroundings.  But  Pasadena  had 
her  A.  P.  L.,  and  they  were  not  in  the  least  above  suspecting 
the  right  people  once  in  a  while,  as  a  brief  tale  or  so  may 
prove.  In  short,  Pasadena  had  more  than  100  cases  of  alien 
enemy  activities,  321  cases  of  disloyalty  and  sedition,  of 
which  thirty-six  were  concerned  with  persons  not  citizens 
of  the  United  States.  These  totals  show  distinctly  the 
amount  of  investigation  required  of  transients,  for  the  War 
Department  cases,  having  to  do  with  the  Selective  Service 
Act,  came  to  only  155  investigations. 

The  B family  of  Pasadena  were  known  as  prom- 
inent pacifists.  They  held  some  very  pleasant  pacifist  meet- 
ings in  their  houses  until  the  Home  Guards  and  the  A.  P.  L. 
got  after  them.  After  that  their  meetings  were  neither  so 
pacifistic  nor  so  pleasant.  There  was  a  professor  of  lan- 
guages at  Throop  College,  who  was  always  a  German  sym- 
pathizer and  who  always  was  very  outspoken  for  Germany. 
He  was  reported  a  number  of  times  to  the  Pasadena  A.  P.  L. 
Throop  was  made  over  into  a  military  training  school,  and 
that  was  about  all  for  Professor  B .    He  did  not  last. 

Mrs.  Jack  C ,  a  society  woman  of  the  Maryland  Ho- 
tel, was  gay  and  liberal  with  officers  and  soldiers  —  would 
even  give  them  a  drink  without  the  formality  of  their  remov- 
ing their  uniforms.  Reported  to  the  authorities.  No  action 
could  be  taken  under  the  law  at  that  time. 

Miss  Helen  F was  a  very  arden  pacifist  and  a  very 

ardent  Socialist  as  well,  and  a  great  friend  of  some  of  the 
Socialists  who  write  books  and  have  a  national  reputation. 


358  THE  WEB 

She  was  investigated  by  the  Department  of  Justice  at  Pasa- 
dena, and  when  she  went  east  to  New  York  last  summer, 
the  Navy  Intelligence  had  her  under  its  watchful  eye  all  the 
time.     Perhaps  she  does  not  know  that. 

Dr.  H of  Pasadena  was  arrested  by  Federal  authori- 
ties, it  having  been  alleged  that  he  "  doctored  "  the  eyes  of 
boys  who  were  subject  to  the  draft. 

'  *  Friends  of  Irish  Freedom  ' ' —  a  branch  of  the  Sinn  Fein 
organization  —  contributed  to  the  defense  of  leaders  of  the 
latter  organization  who  were  on  trial  in  New  York.  Their 
meetings  were  attended  by  two  A.  P.  L.  operatives  who 
reported  to  Department  of  Justice.     Meetings  discontinued. 

M.  J ,  a  prominent  Russian,  staying  at  a  prominent 

hotel  with  a  prominent  count  and  countess,  was  kept  under 
very  prominent  surveillance  for  some  time  and  reported 
daily  to  the  Department  of  Justice. 

Ben  and  Robert  L were  not  so  prominent,  but  were 

content  with  evading  the  draft,  so  it  was  charged.  They 
and  their  mother  fled  the  country  and  went  to  San  Salva- 
dor in  South  America.  Pasadena  Division,  A.  P.  L.,  greatly 
assisted  D.  J.  in  Los  Angeles  in  locating  these  parties.  The 
case  was  of  international  interest. 

Then  there  was  the  case  of  Madam  P ,  reported  to 

be  the  wife  of  a  Russian  count  who  is  now  a  citizen  of  Ger- 
many and  an  officer  in  the  German  army.  Subject  arrived 
in  America  by  way  of  Scandinavia,  by  way  of  Germany. 
She  pronounced  herself  as  frankly  pro-German  in  a  talk 
with  the  A.  P.  L.  operative,  who  speaks  very  good  German 
and  who  claimed  to  be  in  sympathy  with  Germany.  In  pub- 
lic, Madam  is  more  guarded.  She  confided  to  the  operative 
that  she  is  getting  mail  from  her  daughter  in  Munich  through 
the  president  of  the  Norwegian-American  Steamship  Line, 
who  arranged  with  the  captain  for  the  forwarding  and  re- 
ceiving of  letters.  The  Department  of  Justice  got  all  of  this 
as  well,  as  did  the  Postmaster  General  in  Washington. 

In  Pasadena  you  might  run  against  a  count  or  countess 
or  baroness  almost  any  way  you  looked.     There  was  the 

Baroness  P ,  wife  of  a  Philadelphia  man,  who  spends 

her  winters  in  a  Pasadena  hotel.  Very  pro-German  before 
we  went  to  war,  but  more  quiet  since  then.  She  is  watched 
whenever  she  is  in  Pasadena.     It's  getting  so  a  lady  can 


THE  STORY  OF  CALIFORNIA  359 

do  hardly  anything  at  all  without  those  vulgar,  dreadful 
people  knowing  all  about  it! 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  Whittier 

This  division  had  thirty-three  sedition  xBases,  in  spite  of  the 
glorious  climate  of  California.     For  instance,  information 

came  that  one  Jack  H and  his  wife  were  pro-Germans. 

They  were  running  a  fake  jewelry  business  in  Los  Angeles. 
An  A.  P.  L.  investigation  discovered  that  the  gentleman  had 
two  names;  that  he  left  the  Pacific  Coast  in  1910  with 
another  gentleman  and  that  they  conducted  a  fur  business 
in  New  York,  where  they  failed  handsomely  and  went  into 
elegant  bankruptcy.  Suspect  was  alleged  to  have  been  con- 
victed of  perjury  and  sentenced  to  two  or  three  years  in  the 
Federal  prison  at  Atlanta,  Georgia.  It  was  developed  fur- 
ther that  he  was  given  a  stay  of  execution  under  bond  of 
$10,000.  The  bond  was  forfeited  and  subject  came  to  Los 
Angeles,  where  he  resided  with  his  purported  wife  and  did 
business  under  the  name  of  Jack  H .  Upon  said  in- 
formation, duly  secured,  the  gentleman  with  the  alias  was 
arrested,  returned  to  New  York,  and  re-sentenced  to  three 
years  in  the  penitentiary.  His  wife  is  still  trying  to  find 
out  where  A.  P.  L.  learned  all  about  these  things.  Tut,  tut ! 
Cannot  an  honest  jeweler  be  allowed  to  get  away  from  his 
past  in  the  wilds  of  the  Far  West? 

Whittier  is  reported  to  be  a  quiet  Quaker  community.  It 
has  a  population  of  approximately  25,000,  being,  in  effect,  a 
suburb  of  Los  Angeles.  The  local  division  had  forty-three 
men.  Whittier  always  has  boasted  that  it  is  a  place  where 
crooks  do  not  congregate.  There  are  Whittier  oil  fields, 
which  are  the  second  best  on  the  Pacific  slope,  but  there  were 
no  I.  W.  W.'s  in  this  territory,  and  no  pro-Germans  of  any 
very  outspoken  sort,  no  depredations,  but  for  the  most  part 
calm,  as  becomes  a  Quaker  capital. 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  Orleans 

Perhaps  you  do  not  know  where  Orleans,  California,  is 
located?  And  perhaps  you  did  not  know  that  a  branch  of 
the  A.  P.  L.  was  located  in  Orleans  ?    That,  however,  is  the 


360  THE  WEB 

case.  There  were  just  three  members  of  the  Orleans  A.  P.  L., 
and,  since  there  were  but  three,  why  not  break  the  more  or 
less  inexorable  rule  about  names  and  just  give  them  in  this 
case  ?  J.  A.  Hunter  was  Chief  at  Orleans ;  C.  W.  Baker  was 
Secretary ;  and  P.  L.  Young  was  the  third  member. 
The  Chief  reports: 

In  this  small  and  Isolated  community,  this  seemed  to  be  all 
the  organization  necessary.  These  men  were  selected  as  the 
best  representatives  of  the  community,  and  all  subscribed  to 
the  A.  P.  L.  oath.  The  local  headquarters  are  at  Orleans,  with 
no  further  executive  and  office  force  necessary.  Expenses 
were  nominal  and  were  defrayed  by  individual  members. 
Orleans  is  an  isolated  point,  102  miles  from  a  railroad,  com- 
munication with  the  outside  being  by  auto  stages.  It  was  easy 
to  watch  all  travel  through  the  district,  and  the  few  aliens, 
only  two,  who  were  resident  were  easy  to  keep  track  of. 
There  is  no  telegraphic  or  telephone  communication  with  the 
outside,  so  all  reports  had  to  be  made  by  mail.  We  looked 
after  the  work  necessary  in  our  district,  rendering  such  as- 
sistance as  we  were  able  and  were  asked  to  do.  We  had  no 
trouble  at  any  time  with  the  local  authorities. 

[Signed]     J.  A.  HUNTER,  Chief. 

We  may  be  content  to  close  the  story  of  California,  ragged 
and  incomplete  as  it  has  been,  with  this  report  from  a  little 
mountain  community  of  California.  It  is  what  the  author  is 
disposed  to  call  incontestably  the  best  report  that  has  been 
found  in  all  the  great  Golden  State,  if  not,  indeed,  in  all  the 
United  States. 

Only  three  men,  away  out  in  the  hills  —  but  all  of  them 
Americans  and  all  of  them  ready  to  work  for  America  — 
that  is  why  this  League  was  great ;  because  it  had  men  such 
as  these  ready  to  do  its  work,  as  best  they  could,  in  what- 
ever form  it  came  to  hand  for  the  doing.  One  fancies  that 
in  all  the  stories  of  the  many  different  towns  reported  in 
these  pages,  there  will  not  be  one  better  received  by  the  great 
brotherhood  of  the  A.  P.  L.  than  this  one  from  Orleans,  102 
miles  from  the  nearest  rails,  with  no  telegraph  and  no  tele- 
phone. The  author  of  this  book  hopes  to  see  Orleans  some 
time.    He  believes  it  may  be  American. 


BOOK  in 

THE  FOUR  WINDS 

How  Manufactures,  Munitions  and  Agriculture 
were  Protected  —  Briefs  of  Cases  from  All  Over 
the  Country  —  Chips  from  the  Little  Fellow's 
Axe  —  Odds  and  Ends  from  the  Files  —  The  Far- 
Flung  Work  of  the  A.  P.  L. 

I     The  Story  of  the  East 

New  York  —  Pennsylvania  —  New  Jersey  —  Connecticut  — 
Massachusetts  —  Delaware  —  Rhode  Islund  —  Neto  Hamp- 
shire —  Maine  —  Verfiwnt. 

II     The  Story  of  the  North 

Qfiio  —  Indiana  —  Michigan  —  Illinois  —  Wisconsin  — 
Minnesota  —  Missoiiri  —  Iowa  —  South  Dakota  —  North  Da- 
kota —  Kansas  —  Nebraska. 

Ill     The  Story  of  the  South 

Maryland  —  Virginia  —  West  Virginia  —  North  Carolina  — 
South  Carolina  —  Georgia  —  Alabam<i  —  Mississippi  — 
Florida  —  Kentucky  —  Tennessee  —  Louisiana  —  Texas 
—  Arkansas  —  Oklahoma. 

IV    The  Story  of  the  West 

Colorado  —  Montana  —  Netv  Mexico  —  Utah  —  Arizona  — 
Wyoming  —  Idaho  —  Nevada  —  California  —  Oregon  — 
Washington  —  Alaska. 


CHAPTER  1 

THE  STORY  OF  THE  EAST 

In  deplorably  skeletonized  fashion,  we  have  offered  a  brief 
story  of  the  League's  growth,  its  purposes  and  its  methods, 
and  the  stories  of  some  of  its  great  centers.  But  how  about 
the  country-wide  achievements  of  the  League,  its  field  story  % 
How  can  it  be  told?  It  is  matter  of  regret  that  in  no  pos- 
sible way  can  that  ever  be  put  within  the  compass  of  book 
publication.  The  records  of  these  millions  of  cases,  as  has 
been  said,  runs  into  tons. 

If  you  should  visit  the  division  offices,  for  instance,  of 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  San  Francisco,  Chicago,  or  any 
other  large  A.  P.  L.  center,  you  would  see  in  each  city  a 
room  full  of  filing  cabinets,  with  indexed  drawers,  carrying 
in  permanent  form  the  story  of  the  League's  work  in  that 
given  locality.  ]\Iass  all  these  from  the  hundreds  of  cities 
engaged  in  the  work,  and  you  would  have  a  pile  of  filing 
cabinets  as  high  as  a  tall  building.  Go  to  the  National  Head- 
quarters and  you  would  find  more  rooms  full  of  cabinets, 
covering  the  national  work  —  an  enormous  total,  painstaking, 
exact,  correct.  Go  over  to  the  Military  Intelligence  and  you 
see  more  of  the  League 's  work  there.  Go  to  the  Department 
of  Justice  and  look  at  the  vast  accumulations  there  at  hand 
from  the  reports  of  this  auxiliary. 

Now,  in  imagination,  pile  all  this  uncomprehended  assem- 
blage of  records  into  the  middle  of  some- park  or  square  and 
have  a  glance  at  it  in  mass.  In  that  mountain-pile  of  writ- 
ten and  printed  material,  thousands  of  brains  have  recorded 
their  soberest  and  most  just  conclusions,  and  have  told  why 
they  concluded  thus  or  thus.  Thousands  of  stenographers 
have  worked  long  days  and  nights  on  these  tons  of  millions 
of  pages.  Be  sure,  in  this  mass  of  a  nation 's  story  in  counter- 
espionage, there  is  to  be  found,  ticketed  and  tabulated,  filed 
and  cross-indexed  under  name  and  number,  as  part  of  the 
archives  of  the  United  States,  the  life  and  actions,  the  birth, 

363 


364  THE  WEB 

derivation,  antecedents,  comdctions,  assertions  and  beliefs  of 
practically  every  man  and  woman  of  German  name  in 
America.  But  close  to  the  foot  of  this  mass  of  the  archives, 
lay  down  upon  the  ground  a  book,  a  volume  of  ordinary 
size;  let  us  say,  this  book  now  in  your  hand.  How  small  it 
seems !  It  is  small.  It  is  no  more  than  a  fraction,  a  mite. 
It  is  not  enough.  Some  man's  loyal,  unpaid,  patient  labor 
went  into  every  one  of  these  records. 

There  came,  curiously,  cumulatively,  the  feeling  that  this 
was  not  merely  a  mass  of  quasi-public  documents,  but  an 
assemblage  of  the  most  valuable  human  documents  ever  col- 
lected in  America.  This  was  massed  proof,  not  of  work,  but 
of  patriotism.  Then  we  did  have,  we  do  have,  a  country; 
there  is  a  real  America  1  Yes,  and  let  no  man  doubt  it  ever 
again.  It  is  a  great  and  splendid  country.  These  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  pages  which  have  been  read  —  and  every 
report  sent  in  has  been  read  —  make  the  greatest  reflex  of 
America  it  ever  has  been  the  privilege  of  any  man  to  know. 
Talk  no  more  of  a  merely  material  America  —  it  is  not  true. 
The  real  America  at  least  is  a  noble,  a  splendid,  a  patriotic 
country,  eager  to  do  its  share,  determined  to  take  its  place. 

The  bewildering  amount  of  material  from  all  over  the 
United  States  made  condensation  and  classification  alike  dif- 
ficult. It  was  therefore  decided  to  separate  the  country  into 
four  loosely  divided  sections,  the  North,  the  East,  the  West, 
the  South,  and  to  throw  into  each  division  just  so  many 
condensed  reports,  taken  at  random  from  the  whole  as  might 
be  possible  within  the  existing  space  limitations. 

In  the  East  and  Northeast  were  located  many  or  most  of 
the  great  munition  works  and  embarkation  points  as  well  as 
many  centers  of  Avar  work,  manufacturing  and  shipping. 
This  meant  one  form  of  work  for  the  A.  P.  L.  In  the  great 
middle  section  of  the  countrj^  —  the  semi-industrial,  semi- 
agricultural  central  and  north-central  states  —  the  activities 
of  the  League  were  slightly  more  varied.  This  cluster  of 
inland  states  we  have  grouped  as  North.  The  South  is  known 
almost  traditionally ;  and  the  West  may  arbitrarily  be  made 
to  cover  the  far  lands  to  the  Pacific  Coast  itself,  the  state 
of  California,  with  its  great  cities,  alone  being  given  sub- 
classification  in  another  section  of  this  volume.  Into  these 
several  hoppers  the  grist  was  thrown. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  EAST  365 

Would  YOU  like  a  real  history  of  the  war,  a  story  which 
does  convey  a  comprehensible  picture  ?  The  simplest  way  is 
the  best  way.  Read  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for  January,  1919. 
Does  it  give  a  great  pen  picture  by  some  artist  in  words? 
No.  But  it  gives  verbatim  translations  of  bits  of  conversa- 
tion heard  by  a  nurse  in  a  hospital  full  of  wounded  Rus- 
sian soldiers;  detached,  disconnected  comments,  points  of 
view,  records  of  personal  experiences.  That  is  great  report- 
ing—  the  greatest  reporting  in  the  world.  Had  our  more 
famous  correspondents  kept  away  from  the  routine  of  the 
alleged  "  front  "  and  gone  into  the  hospitals  for  a  half  mil- 
lion personal  statements  of  wounded  men  of  every  nation, 
they  would  not  have  failed  to  show  us  the  war.  They  would 
have  written  a  great  story  of  the  war  —  a  real  history  of  the 
war.  Now  the  astonishing  thing  about  the  record  of  the 
A.  P.  L.  is  that  its  reports  came  in  precisely  that  way.  The 
storj'  of  the  League  becomes  a  history  of  the  country  served 
by  the  League. 

NEW  YORK 

Once  in  a  while  an  operative  landed  a  big  case  on  a  small 
clue.     A  New  York  operative  was  sent  out  to  look  up  one 

R.  R.  A ,  an  employe  of  a  shirtwaist  factory,  who  was 

alleged  to  have  said  that  he  knew  how  to  beat  the  draft.  The 
same  suspect  was  heard  to  say  that  he  knew  of  four  men, 
the  knowledge  of  whom  would  be  worth  $10,000  to  the 
United  States.  When  interviewed  by  an  A.  P.  L.  operative, 
he  denied  most  of  the  allegations  made  against  him,  but  he 

did  give  the  name  of  an  Austrian  army  officer  named  L 

who  had  plans  of  submarines  and  battleships  of  the  United 
States.  This  latter  gentleman  was  followed,  his  baggage 
searched,  and  the  plans  confiscated. 

Chautauqua  County,  New  York,  includes  the  cities  of 
Jamestown  and  Dunkirk,  each  of  which  had  an  A.  P.  L. 
branch,  the  former  being  the  first  to  organize,  June  26,  1918. 
The  Chautauqua  County  division  proper  was  organized  as 
late  as  October  28,  1919,  an  assistant  chief  being  appointed 
for  Jamestown  and  for  Dunkirk.  The  entire  county  covers 
an  area  of  about  1,000  square  miles  ai^4  has  a  population  of 
more  than  100,000. 


366  THE  WEB 

The  League  was  of  great  service  in  rounding  up  delin- 
quents who  failed  to  return  questionnaires.  Local  Board  No. 
1  of  the  Jamestown  District  on  November  20,  1918,  had 
ninety-eight  delinquents.  By  December  10,  the  A.  P.  L.  had 
reduced  that  number  to  twenty-one,  and  since  then  fifteen 
more  have  reported,  leaving  only  six  delinquents  out  of  a 
total  registration  of  2,135. 

The  community  was  carefully  organized  with  regard  to 
each  of  the  financial  war  drives.  In  the  war  stamps  cam- 
paign one  E was  discovered  selling  stamps  with- 
out having  been  authorized  to  do  so.  Investigations  showed 
that  he  had  been  secretary  of  the  local  branch  of  the 
German-American  Alliance  and  was  in  constant  association 
with  alien  enemies.    An  associate  of  his,  who  may  be  called 

R ,  said  that  the  German  Club  was  pretty  much  run  by 

a  man  named  F ,  an  Austrian  enemy  alien  who  be- 
longed to  some  lower  order  of  German  nobility  but  had  moved 
to  Austria.  He  became  an  '*  Austrian  "  when  the  United 
States  declared  war  on  Germany,  but  was  willing  to  claim 
citizenship  in  any  country  now  that  diplomatic  relations 
were  severed  with  Austria,  since  he  could  speak  several  lan- 
guages.    The  A.  P.  L.  found  means  to  inspect  the  living 

rooms  of  F ,  discovering  great  quantities  of  German 

papers  and  an  Austrian  flag.  The  remainder  of  the  story, 
told  in  the  words  of  the  Chief's  report,  shows  how  a  mighty 
small  fire  sometimes  can  generate  an  enormous  volume  of 
smoke : 

We   learned    that   P had    admitted    himself   to   be 

engaged  in  getting  German  subjects  out  of  the  United  States 

and  into  the  German  army.     Operative  on  the  case,  R , 

was  confidentially  informed  by  him  that  six  thousand  men  had 
left  this  country  the  preceding  month  and  were  to  be  carried 

by  the  large  trans-Atlantic  submarines.    F himself  was 

going  to  sail  October  4. 
The  operative  invented  a  German  cousin  whose  wife  was  in 

Germany,  and  told  L that  this  cousin  was  very  eager  to 

get  across.  The  cordial  clubman  instructed  him  to  write  a 
letter  to  "Freiherr  Hans  von  Ungelter,"  former  German  Con- 
sul In  New  York,  and  enclose  it  in  another  envelope,  which 
should  bA  addressed  to  (name  given),  care  of  General  De- 
livery, New  York.     The  addressee's  name,  operative  was  in- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  EAST  3g7 

formed,  changed  week  by  week.    Further,  It  was  learned  that 

the  system  followed  by  L 's  New  York  friends  was  to 

give  men  physical  examinations,  and  if  found  fit,  to  furnish 
free  transportation  through  the  channels  mentioned  above. 
The  sole  requirements  were  loyalty  to  Germany  and  a  sound 
physique.     Operative   stated   that   he   showed   surprise   when 

L gave   him   this   information,   and   said:      "Then   the 

report  that  a  German   captain  was  seen  in  New  York  was 

true?"    F replied:     "Certainly,  they  stay  there  a  week 

at  a  time,  taking  in  the  theatres  and  waiting  for  their  cargoes 
to  be  delivered  at  various  ports,  where  they  pick  them  up  on 
their  way  to  Germany." 

R furnished  the  name  of  the  New  York  man  for  the 

current  week,  and  a  good  operative  went  to  New  York  to  con- 
fer with  the  Special  Agent  of  D.  J.  there  and  with  the  New 
York  Division  A.  P.  L.  General  Delivery  was  covered,  but  noth- 
ing showed.  A  second  week  was  tried  with  the  same  result. 
Operative    was    then    asked    to    arrange    an    interview    with 

F for  his  supposed  cousin,  but  F ,  according  to 

operative,  refused  to  talk  or  to  see  this  cousin. 

R came  back  to  us  declaring  that  F knew  he 

was  being  watched  and  suspected  him,  and  might  kill  him. 
Tension   was   high   at  local   headquarters.     Then  we  started 

in  to  investigate  R who  had  been  our  informant  right 

along.  We  learned  that  his  record  was  none  too  good,  for  he 
had  offered  to  procure  releases  for  drafted  men  for  amounts 

ranging  from  $15  to  $30  a  head.    We  then  traced  R back 

to  Buffalo  and  got  this  report:  "Great  talker  and  fine  sales- 
man, but  always  away  over  his  head."  In  other  words  there 
was  no  case  and  never  had  been  one.     By  this  time  we  had 

almost  forgotten  E ,   the  thrift  stamp  man.     We  were 

younger  in  detective  work  then  than  we  were  later. 

A  report  comes  from  Jamestown,  New  York,  regarding  one 

whom  we  will  call  Henry  D ,  described  as  follows: 

"  Known  to  many  in  this  town  as  strongly  pro-German;  a 
radical  socialist ;  believed  to  be  an  anarchist ;  has  been  very 
active  going  from  one  town  to  another.  He  left  Jamestown 
for  Rockford,  Illinois ;  he  went  thence  to  Chicago,  thence  to 
Grand  Rapids.  From  the  latter  city  he  came  back  to  James- 
town. He  has  now  gone  to  New  York.  We  understand  he 
is  contemplating  a  trip  to  the  old  country.  Has  been  very 
secretive  about  his  movements.  Seems  to  spend  a  great 
deal  of  money  in  travel,  although  he  is  only  a  workman ;  has 


368  THE  WEB 

boasted  that  he  had  strikes  called  in  every  shop  to  which  he 
was  sent."  This  man  was  put  under  surveillance  by  the 
New  York  office  of  the  American  Protective  League  under 
charge  of  being  a  dangerous  alien  enemy,  and  was  properly 
dealt  with. 

There  were  no  instances  of  violence  in  Chautauqua  County 
arising  out  of  the  war  situation.  The  community  was  at  all 
times  right  side  up.  Those  who  have  sought  to  belittle  or 
impede  any  war  activity  were  effectively  stilled. 

Schenectady,  New  York,  organized  its  division  on  March  1, 
1918,  with  one  chief,  two  captains,  four  lieutenants,  and 
eighteen  operatives.  The  division  conducted  sixty-seven  in- 
vestigations for  character  and  loyalt}^;  forty-two  under  the 
Espionage  Act;  twenty-six  cases  of  propaganda,  and  fifteen 
of  draft  evasion.  The  division  was  commended  by  the  War 
Department  for  showing  a  high  standard  of  efficiency;  also 
by  the  Federal  Reserve  Bank  at  Albany.  Schenectady  has  a 
large  foreign  population,  among  whom  may  be  found  quite 
a  good  proportion  of  radical  Socialists.  These  people  were 
expected  to  make  trouble  when  we  went  to  war,  especially 
as  two  of  the  largest  local  industrial  concerns,  the  General 
Electric  Company  and  the  American  Locomotive  Company, 
were  engaged  on  munitions  and  other  war  work.  There  was 
no  overt  act,  however,  but  on  the  contrary,  the  people  of  the 
city  proved  intensely  patriotic,  over-subscribing  every  loan. 

Rochester,  New  York,  reports  routine  work  for  its  division, 
but  had  a  good  many  operatives  ready  for  anj^  emergency 
that  might  arise.  The  record-cases  do  not  represent  the 
amount  of  work  actually  done,  but  yield  the  following  fig- 
ures: Character  and  loyalty  reports,  190;  selective  service, 
4;  training  camp  activities,  2;  liquor  and  vice,  none;  war 
risk  insurance,  1 ;  sedition  and  disloyalty  investigations,  25. 
Rochester  would  seem  to  have  been  much  more  pacific  —  not 
pacifistic  —  than  at  first  would  be  expected. 

Albany,  New  York,  offers  an  instance  of  a  phenomenon 
more  or  less  frequently  recurrent  during  the  war  —  namely, 
the  apprehensiveness  of  the  feminine  mind  as  regards  mys- 
terious flashlights  in  the  stilly  night.  The  informant  stated 
that  for  some  time  she  and  her  neighbors  had  been  watching 
flashes  which  came  from  a  certain  house  at  night  and  kept  up 
for  a  long  time.     She  was  very  much  excited.     Two  oper- 


THE  STORY  OP  THE  EAST  369 

atives  visited  the  vicinity  shortly  after  dark.  A  light  did 
appear  which  might  have  been  that  of  a  lantern.  It  would 
dim  and  come  on  again.  The  informant  stated  that  some- 
times the  light  would  grow  as  bright  as  an  automobile  light, 
and  sometimes  it  would  seem  to  be  red.  The  next  morning 
the  operatives  found  a  farmer  plowing  near  the  suspicious 
house.  He  admitted  that  he  owned  the  house.  He  said  he 
and  his  wife  were  American  born,  of  British  grandparents. 
The  operatives  asked  him  about  the  mysterious  lights.  Smil- 
ingly he  asked  them  to  go  through  the  house.  It  then  was 
clearly  evident  that  the  light  they  had  seen  came  from  a  lamp 
in  the  middle  of  a  room.  The  mysterious  intermittent 
flashes  were  only  due  to  persons  passing  between  the  lamp 
and  the  window.  The  farmer  also  said  he  often  worked 
nights  bundling  up  beets,  carrots,  radishes,  etc.,  which  he 
had  pulled  during  the  afternoon  and  expected  to  take  to  early 
market  the  next  morning.  He  usually  did  this  work  just 
outside  the  house  on  a  bench.  On  inquiry  as  to  what  he 
used,  he  showed  a  large  carriage  lantern  with  a  reflector,  in 
the  back  of  which  was  a  piece  of  red  glass.  So  the  women 
had  been  right  after  all.  He  would  move  this  lantern  from 
one  end  of  the  bench  to  the  other  as  he  worked,  and  this  made 
the  changes  in  the  color  of  the  light.  The  intermittent  flashes 
were  due  to  his  passing  back  and  forth  in  front  of  it. 

A  big  chemical  poison  scare  was  nipped  in  the  bud  by  the 
investigation  of  a  German  woman  who  was  found  putting  up 
capsules  of  a  white  powder  in  her  house.  Of  course,  nothing 
less  than  poison  for  our  soldiers  and  sailors  could  be  pre- 
dicted. Investigation  proved  that  though  the  woman  was  of 
German  descent,  she  was  entirely  loyal  to  this  country.  She 
made  a  little  extra  money  at  home  filling  capsules  for  a  drug 
house  in  the  city.  These  capsules  contained  bicarbonate  of 
soda,  tartaric  acid,  etc.,  and  the  woman  took  a  few  of  them 
in  the  presence  of  the  operatives  to  show  that  they  were 
harmless.    Thus,  another  case  proved  to  be  a  '*  dud." 

An  alien  enemy  was  wanted  at  Albany,  reported  by  D.  J. 
to  be  traveling  on  a  motor-cycle.  It  was  known  that  he  had 
a  girl  not  far  away  and  called  on  her  or  wrote  to  her  occa- 
sionally. The  mails  in  this  case,  as  in  many  others,  were 
used  for  decoy  purposes.  A  registered  special  delivery  let- 
ter, marked  for  personal  delivery  only,  was  mailed  to  him 


370  THE  WEB 

at  the  girl's  address,  with  the  idea  that  she  would  give  for- 
warding directions  to  the  messenger  who  delivered  the  letter. 
The  result  was  better  than  expected.  When  the  messenger 
arrived  at  the  house,  he  saw  a  man  just  about  to  leave  on  a 
motor-cycle,  and  thinking  that  this  might  be  the  man,  he 
hailed  him  and  presented  the  letter.  The  suspect  signed  for 
the  letter  and  was  at  once  arrested  and  turned  over  to  the 
Department  of  Justice. 

Syracuse,  New  York,  had  a  man  at  the  head  of  its  divi- 
sion who,  before  he  came  an  A.  P.  L.  chief,  had  made  four 
hundred  investigations,  and  since  that  time  has  directed  one 
hundred  and  fifty  more.  A  very  close  liaison  was  main- 
tained with  the  Department  of  Justice  and  the  local  police 
department. 

Just  as  valuable  as  though  it  recorded  some  great  crime 
is  the  report  from  Hudson  Falls,  New  York:  "  Our  com- 
munity is  made  up  of  loj^al,  patriotic  citizens,  who  responded 
to  each  and  every  call  to  duty.  We  have  been  active  in  local, 
state  and  national  matters  throughout  the  war." 

PENNSYLVANIA 

It  is  hard  to  tell  what  is  going  to  become  of  all  the  military 
fakes  and  pseudo-heroes  now  that  the  war  is  over.  Take, 
for  instance,  the  case  of  one  Captain  Robert  H ,  osten- 
sibly in  the  United  States  Navy,  who  fancied  Philadelphia 
as  his  residence.  This  worthy  captain  was  also  known  by 
other  names.  Sometimes  he  wore  a  uniform  of  an  ordinary 
seaman  with  overseas  service  wound  stripes,  although  he 
never  saw  service  abroad.  He  wrote  to  his  wife  that  he  had 
been  wounded  and  told  her  to  hang  out  a  service  flag  with  a 
silver  star,  which  she  dutifully  did.    The  star  had  not  hurt 

Captain  H ,  so  why  not  put  it  in  the  window?    This 

gentleman  spoke  of  a  great  many  flag-raisings  and  elabo- 
rated on  the  seventy-two  days  he  had  spent  in  the  trenches. 
He  told  all  about  German  atrocities,  and  quite  often  took  up 
collections  for  sick  and  wounded  soldiers  and  sailors  in  the 
name  of  this  or  that  hospital.  There  never  yet  has  been 
found  a  hospital  to  which  he  has  turned  over  a  dollar.  Nat- 
urally a  good  organizer,  this  young  officer  invented  a  good 
Navy  of  his  own,  the  "  Naval  Home  Defense,"  and  at  one 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  EAST  37I 

time  had  enlisted  one  hundred  and  fifty-six  members,  includ- 
ing one  lady  and  her  two  young  sons.  The  project  came  to 
grief  because  of  a  generous  order  for  some  uniforms,  costing 
something  like  $1,000,  which  was  placed  with  a  local  clothing 
firm  and  had  to  be  paid  for.  It  is  too  bad,  because  the  organ- 
ization also  had  a  ladies'  auxiliary,  his  wife  being  president 
thereof.  This  is  only  one  of  a  very  great  number  of  cases  of 
imposters  parading  as  officers  of  this  or  that  country. 

Bradford,  Pennsylvania,  is  in  the  heart  of  the  big  oil 
country,  and  it  had  its  own  troubles  by  reason  of  its  neces- 
sarily motley  population.  A  very  interesting  report  on  local 
conditions,  submitted  by  the  Chief  of  McKean  County  Divi- 
sion, says: 

At  the  outset  we  were  confronted  with  a  situation  fast 
becoming  serious,  as  so  many  industrial  claims  had  been 
allowed  by  the  district  board.  Only  one  or  two  young  men  of 
social  prominence  had  been  inducted  into  the  service,  and 
charges  were  frequently  made  that  the  Government  did  not 
Intend  taking  men  of  wealth  or  prominence  and  that  it  was 
the  laboring  men  who  would  have  to  do  the  fighting.  The 
Socialist  element  was  quick  to  take  advantage  of  this  situa- 
tion, and  men  who  left  here  for  the  service  went  away  feeling 
that  they  had  been  discriminated  against. 

We  took  up  this  situation  with  the  Department  of  Justice, 
who  sent  us  a  Special  Agent.  A  contingent  of  boys  leaving 
for  the  front  did  some  printing  reflecting  very  seriously  on 
the  methods  of  the  draft  board  and  scoring  the  local  slackers. 
They  had  planned  to  put  a  banner  on  their  train  with  such 
inscriptions  as,  "My  father  owns  an  oil  well,  but  I  didn't 
claim  exemption";  "We  have  a  garden  in  our  back  yard,  but 
I  am  not  a  farmer";  etc.  We  headed  off  this  plan,  but  the 
worst  thing  about  it  was  that  many  of  the  names  upon  the 
slacker  list  referred  to  were  of  men  who  had  legitimate  rea- 
sons for  exemption.  At  the  same  time,  there  were  some  men 
named  who  clearly  ought  to  have  been  inducted  into  the  service. 
To  silence  criticism,  we  had  a  district  draft  board  man  come 
to  Bradford,  and  with  him  we  went  over  a  lot  of  cases  which 
had  caused  trouble.  As  a  result,  many  of  these  cases  were 
reclassified,  and  many  men  inducted  into  the  service.  This 
caused  an  entire  change  of  opinion  here,  and  since  then  we 
have  had  no  trouble  of  that  nature. 

We  had  one  exemption  claimer,  a  young  Jewish  merchant, 
who   told   a  very   pathetic   story   about   dependents  —  among 


t 
372  THE  WEB 

others,  a  blind  father  and  an  invalid  brother.  This  young 
Hebrew  was  of  the  belief  that  lie  could  do  so  much  more  for 
his  country  if  left  at  home  to  take  care  of  these  unhappy 
relatives  of  his.  Investigation  did  not  seem  to  bear  out  his 
point  of  view.  He  was  not,  however,  turned  over  to  the 
authorities  for  action  in  regard  to  his  statements,  as  he  was 
wanted  for  the  army  more  than  for  the  courts;  and  yet,  when 
he  was  turned  over  to  the  medical  men  for  examination,  it 
was  found  that  he  had  something  which  he  did  not  know  he 
had  —  serious  heart  trouble  which  actually  exempted  him! 
There  are  some  people  you  can't  beat  any  way  of  the  game. 

A  Bradford  pro-German,  born  in  Germany  but  naturalized 
before  the  war,  has  always  been  socialistic.  Put  under  ob- 
servation, he  was  heard  to  say  in  the  presence  of  many,  at 
a  meeting  in  honor  of  a  man  who  was  going  to  join  the 

colors :  ' '  Here  is  your capitalistic  system  taking 

the  best  men  we  have  and  leaving  men  like "  His  re- 
marks were  resented  and  caused  a  row.  Investigated  and 
reported  to  Department  of  Justice  at  Pittsburgh,  this  pro- 
German  was  arrested  and  placed  under  indictment. 

At  one  of  the  plants  the  loyal  workingmen  had  fixed  it 
all  up  to  paint  a  man  a  nice  yellow  color  because  he  did  not 
subscribe  to  any  Liberty  loans.  A.  P.  L.  operatives  arrived 
just  in  time  to  prevent  the  frescoing  above  mentioned.  The 
suspect  himself  was  taken  aside  and  argued  with  by  the  A.  P. 
L.,  with  the  result  that  he  presently  disclaimed  his  disloyal 
remarks,  said  he  was  sorry,  and  wanted  to  buy  some  bonds 
with  the  other  boys. 

The  Chief  goes  on  to  say  that  Bradford  operated  under 
cover  as  much  as  possible.  A  good  many  townsfolk,  he 
says,  could  not  identify  A.  P.  L.  at  all,  although  there  were 
very  few  who  did  not  know  that  there  had  been  some  sort 
of  checking  up  of  pretty  much  the  entire  population  in  mat- 
ters of  interest  to  the  Government.  This  impression  aided 
in  suppresing  a  great  deal  of  radical  and  seditious  talk,  and 
served  as  a  warning  to  others  not  to  begin  that  sort  of  thing. 

Reading,  Pennsylvania,  reports  170  cases  of  alien  enemy 
activities,  226  cases  of  disloyal  and  seditious  talk,  38  cases  of 
investigation  of  radical  organizations,  such  as  the  I.  W.  W. 
Among  other  interesting  stories  contained  in  the  Reading 
report  is  one  which  has  to  do  with  a  professional  labor  agi- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  EAST  373 

tator,  a  wrong  telephone  number  and  an  alert  A.  P.  L.  oper- 
ative. A  workman  called  up  a  man  whom  he  supposed  to  be 
his  friend,  and  stated  that  there  was  going  to  be  a  strike 
pretty  soon  at  a  certain  factory.  The  recipient  of  the  mes- 
sage happened  to  be  an  A.  P.  L.  operator,  who  at  once  took 
up  the  trail  and  located  his  man  in  the  shop  where  he  was 
employed.  Witnesses  soon  were  found  who  proved  that  this 
was  the  man  who  had  started  the  strike  agitation.  He  had 
been  there  only  two  weeks.  He  had  been  in  three  other  plants 
where  they  were  doing  Government  work  and  had  made 
trouble  in  each  plant.  He  knew  the  percentage  of  Govern- 
ment work  in  each  factory  where  he  had  been  employed.  He 
was  sent  to  Philadelphia  for  full  handling.  It  seemed  that 
he  was  trying  to  get  in  touch  with  an  official  of  a  Socialist 
organization  and  pulled  the  wrong  telephone  number  by  mis- 
take! You  could  never  tell  in  war  times  when  you  were 
talking  to  an  A.  P.  L.  man. 

Wilkesbarre,  Pennsylvania,  had  sixty-six  members  enrolled. 
Considerable  character  and  loyalty  investigation  work  was 
done,  and  a  great  deal  of  seditious  talk  was  stopped  which 
otherwise  might  have  caused  trouble.  The  Chief  adds: 
**  The  mere  fact  that  such  an  organization  as  ours  existed 
and  that  we  were  working  in  secret  had  a  wonderful  moral 
effect  on  the  entire  community.  I  regret  exceedingly  that 
this  organization  has  to  be  dissolved,  and  am  of  the  opinion 
that  it  will  play  an  important  part  in  the  readjustment  which 
is  now  taking  place." 

Meadville,  Pennsylvania,  had  the  usual  routine  work  on 
deserters,  delinquents,  etc.,  and  fourteen  operatives  were  kept 
busy  throughout  the  community.  The  Chief  modestly  says: 
"  We  did  everything  we  could  for  our  country." 

Bristol,  Pennsylvania,  did  not  turn  an;vi:hing  in  to  the 
Federal  courts,  but  weeded  out  a  number  of  undesirable  alien 
enemies  from  the  shipbuilding  plants  in  that  locality.  The 
League  gave  very  material  assistance  to  the  State  Constabu- 
lary and  Borough  Police  Officers  in  making  investigations. 

NEW  JERSEY 

The  Trenton,  New  Jersey,  district  was  one  of  busy  en- 
vironments, and  it  offers  a  number  of  three-star  cases.    Let 


374  THE  WEB 

US  consider  one  Graboski,  who  had  a  friend,  Grabinski,  who 
tipped  off  the  A.  P.  L.  that  Graboski  was  not  a  carpentei', 
but  a  chemist  with  a  doctor's  degree  from  a  foreign  univer- 
sity. This  amiable  masquerader  was  believed  to  have  been 
instrumental  in  blowing  up  the  plant  of  the  General  Electric 
Company  at  Schenectady,  New  York.  In  view  of  his  infor- 
mation, Grabinski  was  dealt  with  leniently,  but  Graboski  was 
followed  to  his  boarding-place  and  was  there  found  in  bed 
listening  to  the  conversation  of  the  occupants  down  stairs. 
He  was  taken  before  the  United  States  District  Attorney  as 
a  preliminary  to  his  internment  in  a  southern  detention 
camp. 

Much  more  proper  than  contrary  is  the  conduct  of  a  Ger- 
man bearing  the  homely  name  of  Schmidt,  living  near 
Trenton,  New  Jersey.  Investigation  was  made  on  report 
of  a  neighbor.  By  the  time  the  operative  called,  Schmidt 
had  a  service  flag  in  his  window.  Many  different  subjects 
were  discussed,  including  music.  Old  man  Schmidt  had  no 
more  investigations  after  he  declared  himself : 

Yah,  ve  Chermans  ist  fond  of  muslk.  I  like  musik,  und 
mine  vife,  she  like  it  to.  I  haf  der  old  violin  vot  I  brot  mit 
me  from  Chermany.  I  blay  him  a  liddle  alvays  —  old  Cherman 
tunes  —  vot  ist  all  I  know.  Maybe  you  hear  me  sometimes 
—  last  year,  vot?  No?  Veil,  I  blay  him  not  any  more  now. 
You  see,  der  boy  —  mine  son  —  you  don't  know  him  —  he  never 
live  mit  us  here  —  he  vork  in  Chicago  —  he  ist  in  American 
Army  already.  Und  I  luf  to  blay,  but  all  vot  I  know  ist 
shust  Cherman  tunes  —  dat's  all  —  so  I  don't  blay  any  more. 
I  hav  der  old  viddle  avay  put. 

Trenton,  New  Jersey,  staged  a  draft  raid  with  two  hun- 
dred A.  P.  L.  men  and  a  detachment  from  Philadelphia 
under  the  leadership  of  the  Assistant  Chief  of  that  city.  At 
the  Trenton  Fair  there  was  a  crowd  of  75,000  people.  The 
raiders  set  out  in  fifty  automobiles  and  broke  up  into  small 
parties.  At  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  the  dragnet  went 
to  work,  and  no  one  was  allowed  to  leave  the  grounds  without 
credentials.  Even  the  fences  were  watched.  All  operatives, 
whether  from  the  Department  of  Justice  or  the  A.  P.  L., 
worked  with  courtesy,  and  there  was  no  more  difficulty  in 
getting  out  of  the  grounds  than  there  would  be  in  getting  into 


.  THE  STORY  OF  THE  EAST  375 

a  theatre  if  provided  with  a  ticket.  Many  of  the  men  appre- 
hended were  farmers  from  out  of  the  way  places  and  had 
their  wives  and  children  with  them.  Those  being  evidently 
not  of  the  slacker  variety  were  released  with  the  -understand- 
ing that  they  report  to  their  local  boards.  No  one  was  de- 
layed unnecessarily.  After  this,  all  the  side  shows  and 
amusements  were  combed  out,  and  several  men  were  picked 
up  in  this  way.  About  300  were  apprehended  and  taken  to 
the  armory,  where  their  cases  were  passed  on.  Four  deserters 
from  our  Army  were  taken,  and  the  British  Military  Police 
apprehended  a  man,  thought  to  be  a  pickpocket,  who  was 
masquerading  in  a  Canadian  uniform.  This  raid  was  con- 
ducted after  the  much  criticised  New  York  slacker  drive, 
and  the  contrast  was  commented  upon  by  the  local  press. 

CON^^ECTICUT. 

New  Haven,  Connecticut,  might  very  well  have  been  a 
seat  of  trouble,  but  appears  to  have  pursued  the  usually 
even  tenor  of  her  way,  sending  her  young  men  out  in  hun- 
dreds to  fight  the  country's  battles,  and  making  very  little 
fuss  about  it.  The  division  took  part  in  five  minor  slacker 
raids,  in  which  the  men  gave  satisfactory  account  of  them- 
selves, working  closely  in  touch  with  the  Department  of 
Justice  and  the  Military  Intelligence,  especially  in  the  mat- 
ter of  protection  of  the  large  munition  factories  against 
sabotage.  New  Haven  is  one  of  the  great  American  centers 
for  the  making  of  firearms,  and  that  there  has  been  no 
serious  trouble  there  is  a  matter  of  congratulation.  There 
were  226  investigations  made  for  the  War  Department,  each 
investigation  necessitating  interviews  with  at  least  three  per- 
sons. The  organization  at  New  Haven  was  quiet,  even  tem- 
pered, and  strictly  efficient,  a  fine  example  in  a  state  which 
was  very  strong  in  its  A.  P.  L.  organizations. 

New  London,  Connecticut,  besides  routine  activities,  had 
one  case  which  involved  the  trailing  of  a  count,  a  princess, 
a  Russian  banker,  a  Greek  candy  manufacturer,  and  a  prize- 
fighter, besides  a  person  described  as  a  "  male,^'  but  who 
proved  to  be  a  young  lady  in  a  well-known  local  family. 
With  these  ingredients  as  preliminary,  it  might  almost  be 
sufficient  to  tell  any  reader  to  write  his  own  ticket  —  and  in- 


376  THE  WEB 

deed  the  case  is  not  yet  closed.  It  will  probably  turn  out  to 
be  one  of  American  Bolshevism.  The  Chief  says  there  is 
enough  in  this  for  a  good  movie  scenario.  As  much  might 
be  said  for  another  pro-German  case  in  which  the  beautiful 
and  accomplished  suspect  was  followed  by  D.  J.  men,  who 
installed  a  dictograph  in  her  hotel  apartments.  This  case 
also  had  to  do  with  a  draft  of  $14,000  traced  from  Montreal 
to  a  New  York  bank,  through  which  British  Secret  Service 
men  discovered  a  paymaster  of  German  spies  in  this  coun- 
try. This  woman  met  several  Army  and  Navy  officers  in  the 
course  of  her  travels  along  three-fourths  of  the  Atlantic 
Coast.  It  is  most  disappointing  to  have  the  Chief  add: 
''  We  are  unable  to  disclose  for  publication  any  further 
facts  at  this  date." 

New  London  had  a  number  of  special  investigations,  some 
of  them  interesting,  others  ludicrous.  One  of  the  latter  was 
Case  No.  245,  Subject  ''  Mysterious  Flashes."  A  woman 
residing  on  the  shore  reported  mysterious  flashlights,  inter- 
mittent, but  long  continued.  She  was  sure  of  nothing  less 
than  a  German  invasion.  An  operative  was  put  on  the  case 
and  worked  five  hours  one  night.  He  found  a  mysterious 
man  walking  up  and  down  the  beach.  He  had  an  electric 
torch  which  he  flashed  here  and  there,  muttering  to  himself 
the  while,  and  now  and  then  putting  something  in  his 
pocket.  Summoning  all  his  nerve,  the  operative  cried: 
"  Halt!  Who  goes  there?  "  Inquiry  proved  that  the  man 
was  in  sailor  garb.  When  questioned  as  to  the  nature  of 
his  mysterious  actions,  he  replied:  ''  I  am  catching  night- 
crawlers  for  fishing.  I  want  to  get  some  eels  for  my  break- 
fast." 

Mystic  Village,  Connecticut,  furnished  another  scare  of 
the  same  variety.  Near  the  village  is  a  hill,  known  as  Lan- 
tern Hill  since  Colonial  days,  because  it  is  a  convenient 
signal  post.  Stories  got  out  about  mysterious  lights  on 
Lantern  Hill.  On  one  clear  night  the  investigators  saw  what 
seemed  to  be  unmistakable  signalling.  The  light  was  bril- 
liant and  changed  in  color  from  green  to  red.  State  and 
Naval  authorities  resolved  to  look  into  the  matter,  and  it  was 
arranged  that  on  a  given  night  patrols  of  naval  reservists 
from  the  submarine  base  and  detachments  of  the  Home 
Guard  should  surround  the  hill,  while  forces  of  the  Guard' 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  EAST  377 

were  to  patrol  the  shores  of  the  sound  to  catch  sight  of  any 
answering  signals  from  the  sea.  The  patrols  were  duly  set, 
and,  sure  enough,  the  light  began  to  show  as  brilliant  and 
mysterious  as  could  be  asked.  It  seemed  to  swing  at  an 
altitude  of  about  two  hundred  feet  above  the  woods.  It 
occurred  to  one  of  the  naval  officers  on  watch  that  with  the 
aid  of  his  powerful  night  glass  and  a  convenient  perpendicu- 
lar presented  by  the  side  of  the  barn,  he  might  triangulate 
the  position  of  the  light.  He  had  not  been  at  this  very 
long  when  he  broke  out  into  laughter  and  announced  that 
what  they  had  taken  to  be  a  mysterious  light  was  only  a 
star  rendered  abnormally  brilliant  by  the  refractive  effect  of 
the  damp  night  air.  Its  later  disappearances  were  accounted 
for  by  the  later  rise  in  altitude,  when  of  course  the  light 
would  cease  to  be  distinguishable  from  others  of  like  alti- 
tude. Taking  it  all  in  all,  this  about  finished  the  cases  of 
the  many  mystic  lights  which  were  reported  from  time  to 
time. 

Litchfield,  Connecticut,  up  near  the  stern  and  rockbound 
coast,  offers  a  good  example  of  sober-going  loyalty.  There 
were  only  fifty-one  cases  of  seditious  talk  and  twenty  of 
propaganda,  whereas  the  selective  service  regulation  involved 
734  cases. 

Ansonia,  Connecticut,  was  honored  by  the  presence  of  a 
Kussian  Soviet  Society  called  the  "  Society  Lunch,"  which 
had  regular  meetings  and  was  organizing  other  societies  in 
nearby  towns.  Sometimes  this  society  would  get  a  speaker 
from  the  outside,  such  as  the  editor  of  the  Russian  Voice, 
published  in  New  York.  The  city  of  Ansonia  did  not  like 
these  things,  inasmuch  as  they  tended  to  promote  anarchy 
and  foster  revolution.  .  The  division  had  one  of  its  opera- 
tives among  the  membership,  he  having  joined  the  society 
for  the  purpose  of  reporting  on  its  activities.  Wliat  the 
society  did  became  henceforth  a  matter  of  interest  not  only 
to  its  membership,  but  also  to  the  local  body  of  A.  P.  L. 
vigilantes. 

The  Chief  of  Norwalk,  Connecticut,  worked  in  close  touch 
with  the  police  of  his  city  and  was  on  the  lookout  for  the 
various  alien  enemies  reported  from  headquarters.  He  says : 
"  No  alien  enemy  actually  apprehended  in  my  district.  The 
only  way  we  can  account  for  it  is  that  they  were  afraid  to 
come  here." 


378  THE  WEB 

Essex,  Connecticut,  says  something  which  will  meet  gen- 
eral agreement:  "  We  firmly  believe  that  the  A.  P.  L.  has 
done  an  inestimable  work  in  the  protection  of  our  countrv\ 
Every  man  in  this  division  is  glad  of  the  opportunity  af- 
forded to  be  enrolled  as  an  A.  P.  L.  member. ' ' 

MASSACHUSETTS 

Springfield,  Mass.,  had  only  nineteen  members  in  its 
division.  That  we  may  know  the  nature  of  the  League 
membership  as  a  whole,  let  us  look  at  the  qualifications  of 
these  nineteen  men.  They  included  a  lawj^er,  a  physician, 
a  broker,  a  private  secretary,  a  social  service  worker,  an  ad- 
vertising manager,  a  college  president,  a  bank  president,  a 
furniture  buyer,  a  merchant,  a  superintendent  of  the  Brad- 
street  Company,  a  traveling  salesman,  a  life  insurance  agent, 
a  masseur,  a  surgeon,  a  musician,  a  shipping  foreman,  a 
bank  teller  and  a  high  school  teacher.  The  work  of  the 
Springfield  division  had  to  do  largely  with  character  and 
loyalty  investigations,  which  ran  all  the  way  from  nobody 
at  all  to  a  bishop  in  the  Episcopal  Church.  Some  male  and 
female  applicants  for  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  K.  of  C.  and  Red  Cross 
were  found  unfit  "  either  because  of  immoralities  or  bad 
habits."  Once  in  a  while  a  case  of  disloyalty  and  sedition 
came  up  which  would  cause  a  smile.  An  applicant  for  a 
commission  whose  father  was  a  Belgian  and  whose  mother 
was  a  German  was  investigated  and  was  found  to  be  a  loyal 
American.  When  questioned,  he  said  he  was  for  the  United 
States  of  America,  but  that  "  father  would  never  forgive 
mother  for  the  invasion  of  Belgium. ' ' 

A  more  spectacular  Springfield  case  hung  on  a  letter  sent 
by  the  War  Department  to  the  A.  P.  L.  reading  as  follows : 

Will  you  please  have  your  agents  investigate  a  man  living 
at  71  Catherine  Street,  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  known  as 

August  X ,  and  report  the  result  of  their  investigation 

to  me? 

The  final  result  of  this  investigation  was  that  the  subject 
was  interned,  having  been  proved  to  have  been  a  former  sol- 
dier in  von  Kluck's  army  of  invasion  in  1914,  who  had  been 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  EAST  379 

taken  prisoner  by  the  French,  had  escaped  from  France  to 
the  United  States  and  drifted  to  Springfield,  where  he  got 
employment  in  a  machine  shop.  "  I  have  always  wondered," 
says  the  Chief,  "  from  whom  the  War  Department  received 

the  first  information  regarding  August  X ,  and  won- 

r'er  if  again  we  have  a  case  of  cherchez  la  femme.'' 

DELAWARE 

This  state  is  not  one  of  the  largest  in  the  Union,  and  its 
report  is  not  one  of  the  largest  in  the  world,  but  it  fore- 
shadows a  very  satisfactory  state  of  affairs,  both  past  and 
future. 

Mr.  Robert  Pennington  was  State  Inspector  for  Delaware. 
He  worked  by  means  of  three  county  associates  and  a  full 
set  of  captains,  one  for  each  representative  district  of  the 
State.  A  great  deal  of  routine  work  was  handled,  much  of 
which  had  to  do  with  applications  for  commissions,  overseas 
service,  etc.,  as  well  as  a  certain  number  of  sedition  and  dis- 
loyalty cases.  Some  Red  Cross  rumors  were  run  down,  and 
at  least  one  important  investigation  was  made  of  a  man  who 
was  putting  out  machinery  better  adapted  for  mixing  ex- 
plosives than  for  grinding  alleged  dental  powder.  These 
machines  were  to  be  shipped  to  Switzerland  to  a  point  near 
the  German  border.  Some  draft  evaders,  deserters  and 
slackers  were  rounded  up  duly.  Many  investigations  were 
made  by  the  various  chiefs  and  reported  direct  to  Washing- 
ton. The  State  Inspector  had  almost  daily  requests  from 
the  Department  of  Justice  in  Washington  in  the  matter  of 
draft  deserters. 

RHODE  ISLAND 

Providence,  R.  L,  had  a  good  active  organization  of  275 
members,  all  loyal  and  hard-working  Americans.  They  did 
yeoman  service  in  assisting  the  local  branch  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice,  whose  offices  were  so  crowded  with  work  at 
times  that  the  help  of  the  League  was  sorely  needed. 

The  A.  P.  L.  in  Wakefield,  R.  I.,  was  small  but  busy,  like 
all  the  rest  of  that  great  little  State.  Much  of  the  League's 
activity  in  this  district  had  to  do  with  covering  the  rough 


380  THE  WEB 

and  broken  seashore,  a  region  largely  occupied  by  well-to-do 
Germans.  Some  of  these  alien  inhabitants  were  found  to  be 
out-and-out  disloyalists,  over  sixty  such  cases  being  investi- 
gated. 

NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

The  lack  of  any  extended  reports  from  this  state  would 
indicate  an  absence  of  many  of  the  tortuous  problems  that 
assailed  her  larger  New  England  neighbors.  Manchester, 
N.  H.,  reports  that  the  local  division  cooperated  with  al- 
most every  governmental  activity  in  the  State,  including  the 
Department  of  Justice,  draft  boards.  Red  Cross,  Four  Min- 
ute Men,  and  other  branches  too  numerous  to  mention.  We 
may  write  almost  identically  the  same  comment  for  Maine 
and  Vermont. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH 

Nature  has  not  put  upon  the  face  of  the  globe  any  region 
more  fit  or  more  inviting  for  human  occupancy  than  the 
temperate  zone  of  North  America.  The  soil  is  fertile,  pro- 
ducing with  fair  tillage  all  the  forms  of  food  needful  for 
the  full  development  of  the  human  species.  The  climate  is 
precisely  that  which  calls  for  sufficient  human  exertion  in 
the  unescapable  battle  of  life,  but  not  enough  to  debar  men 
from  a  rich  surplus  of  things  beyond  the  mere  living,  which 
in  the  tropics  is  all  a  man  asks,  or  in  the  Arctics  is  all  a  man 
may  hope.  Lastly,  its  natural  transportation  is  easy  and 
abundant.  The  rugged,  virile,  enterprising  and  successful 
population  of  that  region  is  Nature's  offering  to  the  prob- 
lems of  the  world's  future,  and  it  is  safe  prophecy  that  in 
this  region  of  America  always  will  be  produced  many  of  the 
world's  greatest  thinkers  and  greatest  doers;  because  here, 
surely,  is  a  splendid  human  environment. 

But  man,  like  other  species,  is  a  product  of  two  forces, 
environment  and  heredity.  What  was  the  heredity  of  the 
temperate  zone?  Of  the  best,  the  strongest,  the  most  enter- 
prising. The  Colonies,  New  England  and  the  upper  South, 
sent  their  strongest  sons  west  in  the  early  days.  Later,  the 
restless  populations  of  Europe,  of  Irish,  Teutonic  and 
Scandinavian  stock,  began  to  swarm  into  that  favored  region, 
a  good  part  of  which,  then  known  as  our  West,  lay  unoccu- 
pied. The  Civil  War  prevented  what  we  might  call  the 
Americanization  of  the  Northwest,  which  attracted  heavy 
immigration  of  North-European  stocks.  But  all  the  men 
moving  out  along  the  forty-second  parallel  as  a  meridian 
line  of  latitude  were  of  strong,  well  selected  human  stock. 
That  was  the  original  ancestry  of  what  we  might  call  our 
''North." 

We  rudely  may  group  this  region  as  that  lying  along  the 
Mississippi,  the  Missouri  and  their  upper  tributaries.    Here 

381 


382  THE  WEB 

lies  one  of  the  great  future  countries,  one  of  the  anchoring 
grounds  of  humanity.  Beyond  doubt  it  will  eventually  offer 
support  to  a  vast  population.  The  great  population-centers, 
the  great  civilizations  of  the  world,  always  have  been  along 
the  great  river  valleys. 

In  the  North,  then,  we  see  a  rich  region,  rich  in  soil,  in 
forests,  in  minerals.  Consider  what  ore  Minnesota  and 
Michigan,  by  means  of  natural  transportation,  have  sent  to 
Ohio  and  Pennsylvania  for  manufacturing !  Consider  what 
millions  of  feet  of  rich  pine  Michigan,  Wisconsin,  Minnesota 
have  given  the  world !  And  consider,  if  you  can,  the  wealth 
which  has  come  out  of  the  soil  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Iowa, 
Minnesota,  the  Dakotas  and  all  the  rest  of  what  we  call  the 
North!  The  earth  has  known  nothing  like  it.  Here  was 
won  the  great  war  of  the  world,  in  which  Peace  overthrew 
Militarism,  let  us  hope,  for  all  time.  Here  grew  the  sinew 
which  America  put  into  this  war,  and  it  is  in  great  part 
because  of  her  rich  river  ■  valleys  that  America  to-day  is  the 
hope  of  all  the  world  in  the  day  of  peace. 

Naturally,  if  we  should  consider  all  these  things,  consider 
the  persistence  of  racial  types,  consider  the  natural  contest 
of  all  these  strong  men  for  the  wealth  of  a  rich  new  region, 
we  could  in  advance  predict  that  here  in  the  North,  there 
would  be  presented  bitter  phases  of  that  combat  which  the 
enemy  fought  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

OHIO 

Typical  among  the  thriving  industrial  cities  of  the  Middle 
West  is  Akron,  Ohio,  a  city  of  150,000  inhabitants,  well 
known  for  its  prominence  in  the  rubber  industry  and  other 
lines  of  manufactory  of  great  use  to  the  Government.  The 
A.  P.  L.  division  in  such  a  city  might  naturally  be  expected 
to  have  something  to  do.  The  Akron  division  began  in  the 
brain  of  a  somewhat  solitary  agent  of  the  Department  of 
Justice,  W.  A.  Garrigan,  who  was  sent  to  Akron  to  serve 
his  country  all  alone,  equipped  with  one  perfectly  good  aegis 
of  the  law,  but  not  much  else.  There  were  men  all  about 
who  were  more  or  less  actively  engaged  in  helping  Ger- 
many—  men  who  were  spreading  Socialistic  propaganda 
hindering  the  draft;  men  failing  to  qualify,  knocking  the 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  383 

Liberty  Loan,  and  doing  everything  else  they  ought  not  to  do 
and  leaving  undone  the  things  they  ought  to  do.  Mr.  Gar- 
rigan  found  that  the  Government  had  not  appropriated 
money  enough  for  his  office  rent,  much  less  enough  to  em- 
ploy men  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  Akron  conditions.  He 
needed  men.  Then  overnight  the  Akron  division  of  the  A. 
P.  L.,  beginning  with  two  hundred  men,  sprang  into  existence, 
as  it  did  so  magically  and  mysteriously  all  over  America. 
Mr.  Elihu  Harpham,  manager  of  a  local  manufacturing  con- 
cern, took  the  position  of  Chief.  He  had  able  assistants, 
and  always  these  men  worked  in  close  touch  with  the  De- 
partment of  Justice,  even  in  its  most  delicate  and  dangerous 
enterprises. 

Akron,  according  to  all  reports,  had  an  exceptionally  large 
number  of  draft  slackers  —  men  who  had  registered  here 
and  disappeared  before  the  numbers  were  drawn.  It  was 
estimated  at  one  time  that  3,000  men  had  registered  in  Akron 
and  never  been  heard  of  again.  It  was  indeed  a  Port  of 
Missing  Men.  Akron  Division  took  this  matter  up,  and  in  its 
first  year's  work  rounded  up  6,856  men.  The  word  passed 
among  all  the  employees  of  Akron's  great  factories  that  it 
was  not  a  good  thing  for  a  man  to  be  around  without  his 
draft  card  in  his  pocket.  ]\Iany  hundreds  of  men  who  were 
delinquent  came  in  voluntarily  to  their  draft  boards.  Per- 
haps the  figures  will  tell  the  tale  as  well  as  words : 

Slackers    6,856 

Alleged  false  questionnaires 255 

Interned  alien  enemies 17 

Pro-Germanism  245 

Socialistic  propaganda  98 

Sedition 124 

Food  regulations  94 

Liberty  Bonds  and  Stamps 86 

Soldiers  absent  without  leave 51 

Alien  enemy  investigations 159 

Character  investigations:     War  Department,  Red  Cross, 

Y.  M.  C.  A.,  etc 34 

Miscellaneous    4,847 

Total  cases  handled  first  year 11,866 

Delinquents  and  deserters  sent  to  Camp  Sherman,  Chilli- 
cothe,  Ohio,  by  this  office 870 


384  THE  WEB 

In    the   comprehensive   report   submitted   by   the   Akron 
division,  Chief  Harpham  says : 

We  started  out  in  a  small  way  to  assist  the  Akron  oflQce  of 
the  Bureau  of  Investigation,  but  expanded  rapidly  and  soon 
had  thoroughly  equipped  oflBces,  complete  card  filing  systems, 
and  a  sufficient  force  to  keep  our  records  and  carry  on  our 
work  in  an  efficient  way.  We  now  have  a  membership  of 
two  hundred  and  eighty-three,  enrolled  from  the  ranks  of  rep- 
resentative citizens  who  have  given  untiring  efforts  to  the 
work.  I  know  of  no  single  case  that  has  not  been  handled  to 
the  entire  satisfaction  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  and  with- 
out any  display  of  officiousness.  It  is  very  gratifying  to  those 
who  have  performed  service  to  receive  these  expressions  of 
appreciation.  I  shall  never  be  able  to  convey  to  our  members 
the  keen  appreciation  of  their  loyal  support  which  has  made 
our  success  possible.  It  has  been  a  pleasure  for  me  to  serve 
as  Chief  and  to  know  that  we  have  been  a  part  of  the  power- 
ful organization  which  has  contributed  so  much  toward  the 
winning  of  the  war. 


Of  these  men  who  did  the  work  —  and  it  is  work  to  handle 
nearly  12,000  casee  —  all  were  unpaid  volunteers.  Other 
members  of  the  business  community  contributed  money,  al- 
though classified  as  inactive  members.  Such  laborers  in  the 
ranks  must  be  content  to  go  unsung  and  unhonored,  although 
they  truly  helped  to  win  the  war. 

Columbus,  Ohio,  is  another  solid,  steady-going  to^vn  which 
may  be  depended  upon  to  do  the  sensible  thing  and  the  loyal 
thing  —  albeit  at  times  in  rather  violent  fashion.  A  Luth- 
eran minister  of  Columbus  was  reported  for  pro-German 
talk  and  was  found  to  be  of  German  parentage,  although 
himself  American  born.  He  acknowledged  he  had  never 
allowed  an  American  flag  in  his  church,  and  had  never 
uttered  a  prayer  for  this  country  or  its  army.  An  operative 
told  him  to  be  careful  about  his  praying  for  * '  our  country, ' ' 
lest  he  should  be  understood  as  meaning  Germany  and  not 
the  United  States.  The  community  forced  him  to  leave  his 
charge  —  none  too  soon,  for  the  sentiment  toward  him  was 
rapidly  becoming  dangerous. 

A  Columbus  restaurant  employed  a  German-looking  cook 
who  seemed  to  have  considerable  money,   and  who   acted 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  385 

rather  suspicionsl3\  A.  P.  L.  traced  his  history,  covering 
two  or  three  positions  which  he  had  held,  and  at  length 
called  him  in  to  headquarters  for  a  general  going  over  of 
the  third-degree  sort.  He  was  found  to  have  acted  as  cook 
in  the  army  cantonments  at  Chillicothe,  and  was  discovered 
to  be  a  German  alien  without  permit  or  any  papers  allowing 
him  in  this  country.  Among  his  papers  there  was  found  a 
photograph  of  himself  in  the  uniform  of  a  lieutenant  in  the 
German  army,  also  his  order  for  mobilization  in  the  German 
army  in  1913.     He  is  now  interned. 

That  the  Columbus  division  of  A.  P.  L.  was  at  all  times 
busily  engaged  in  winning  the  war  on  this  side  is  amply 
proved  by  its  report : 

Slackers  135 

Delinquents  and  deserters 366 

Alleged  false  questionnaires 83 

Bootlegging    107 

Pro-German    375 

Socialistic  propaganda   83 

Vice   complaints    235 

Soldiers  absent  without  leave 8 

Alien  enemies 48 

Character  investigations 192 

Toledo,  Ohio,  had  162  cases  of  disloyalty  and  sedition  to 
investigate,  and  600  cases  of  word-of-mouth  propaganda. 
Many  of  the  reports  turned  in  by  zealous  operatives  are 
worth  reprinting. 

A  slacker  was  brought  into  Toledo  headquarters  minus 
his  card,  but  he  protested  that  he  had  registered.  He  de- 
clared himself  to  be  drunk,  said  that  the  registrar  was  drunk, 
that  it  was  funny  they  couldn't  find  his  card,  but  if  they 
would  go  to  Detroit  and  find  his  friend  Heine  So-and-so  — 
street  address  unknown  —  Heine  would  tell  them  he  had 
registered.     Not  considered  conclusive. 

Another  operative  in  Toledo  fancied  himself  very  much 
in  the  role  of  Sherlock  Holmes.  In  one  case  assigned  him, 
he  was  trailing  a  subject-  who  turned  and  started  toward 
the  operative.  The  latter  stated  in  his  report:  "  When  I 
noticed  the  subject  coming  toward  me,  I  immediately  jumped 
over  a  hedge  and  hid  behind  some  bushes. ' ' 


386  THE  WEB 

Toledo  did  some  business  in  the  slacker  raids,  having 
examined  some  2,000  men  in  one  drive. 

Youngstown,  Ohio,  reflects  a  very  sensitive  social  condi- 
tion which  existed  during  the  war  in  every  community  which 
owned  a  considerable  foreign  bom  population.  The  Chief 
comments  on  this  quite  frankly : 

A  feature  of  our  work  was  the  demand,  made  by  people 
in  all  stations,  that  the  Federal  Government,  of  which  we 
were  supposed  to  be  a  direct  agency,  should  look  after  the 
enforcement  of  laws  concerning  health,  morals  and  even  family 
relations.  A  remarkable  fact  in  connection  with  these  inves- 
tigations was  the  utter  inability  of  a  certain  class  of  German 
origin  to  forget  their  German  ties  and  to  live  up  to  their 
oath  of  allegiance  to  America,  which  they  took,  many  of  them, 
fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago.  In  one  case  it  was  frankly  ad- 
mitted by  the  subject  that  he  had  never  thought  about  Ger- 
many going  into  a  war  with  America  when  he  applied  for 
naturalization  papers.  We  have  developed  the  fact  that  many 
households  in  America  have  been,  are  and  always  will  be 
nothing  but  a  part  of  Germany  in  our  midst. 

Youngstown  turns  in  157  cases  of  alien  enemy  activities, 
and  459  of  disloyalty  and  sedition.  There  were  213  cases  of 
anti-military  activity  and  674  cases  of  propaganda,  not  men- 
tioning 183  cases  of  I.  W.  W.  and  other  radicalism.  In  the 
report  of  this  division,  the  Department  of  Justice  work  quite 
overshadows  the  War  Department  activities,  because  there 
are  only  213  investigations  under  the  Selective  Service  Act 
and  67  for  character  and  loyalty,  although  there  were  141 
investigations  of  desertions  and  absences  without  leave. 

There  was  a  certain  man  in  the  vicinity  of  Napoleon, 
Ohio,  who  put  up  a  really  stubborn  fight  against  American- 
ism.    The  Chief  of  the  division  saj^s : 

I  got  a  telephone  message  that  one  hundred  Germans,  armed 
with  guns,  were  gathered  in  an  alien  enemy's  house  and 
wanted  to  fight.  As  county  president  of  the  League  of  Ameri- 
can Patriots,  I  called  out  five  hundred  members,  and  with 
fifteen  A.  P.  L.  members,  we  started  for  the  place  after  night- 
fall. We  traveled  the  eighteen  miles  in  cars,  but  as  we  were 
approaching,  the  Germans  saw  our  headlights  and  dispersed, 
except  for  a  few  who  didn't  get  away.  We  got  three  men, 
and  found  some  ammunition  and  one  gun  in  a  wheat  field. 
We  were  shot  at,  but  none  of  us  were  hurt,  although  the  report 


THE  STORY  OP  THE  NORTH  387 

got  noised  about  that  we  had  fifteen  killed.  A  carnival  was 
being  held  in  a  little  town  nearby,  and  when  we  got  back  at 
2:00  A.  M.,  the  ladies  were  waiting  with  hot  coffee' and  sand- 
wiches for  us,  so  we  didn't  call  it  a  bad  night's  work.  We 
nailed  an  American  flag  to  the  house  of  that  enemy  alien,  and 
it  is  still  waving  there.  The  next  day  the  Department  of 
Justice  was  on  hand.  We  traveled  into  three  counties  to  get 
a  man  who  said  that  some  Germans  had  guns  and  would  use 
them.  It  was  said  that  these  gims  were  to  aid  Germany  in 
case  she  could  effect  a  landing  in  this  country. 

About  seventy  per  cent  of  the  inhabitants  of  Henry  County 
are  of  German  descent,  and  many  remained  in  sympathy  with 
Germany  even  after  we  went  into  the  war.  We  could  do  little 
with  them.  Our  League  of  Patriots  tried  nineteen  cases  in 
Henry  County,  relieved  a  bank  cashier  of  his  position,  got  a 
State'  road  superintendent  dismissed  and  brought  a  good  many 
other  pro-Germans  out  into  the  open.  The  A.  P.  L.  assisted 
In  getting  much  of  the  evidence  against  the  road  superin- 
tendent, who  was  heard  to  say:  "If  this  country  goes  into 
the  war  with  Germany,  one  million  Germans  will  rebel,  and 
I  will  be  one  of  them."  Thus  far,  the  million  Germans  seem 
less  disposed  to  rebel   since  the  eleventh   of  last  November. 

Yellow  Springs,  Ohio,  is  another  instance  of  simple,  hon- 
est, heel  and  toe  hard  work.  The  division  assisted  in  all 
the  war  acti\i:ies,  and  helped  out  the  Department  of  Justice 
in  divers  instances  in  collecting  testimony. 

Wooster,  Ohio,  says:  ''  Our  principal  activities  had  to  do 
with  conscientious  objectors.  We  tried  to  deal  with  these 
people  in  accordance  with  the  law,  and  also  in  accordance 
with  the  regulations  promulgated  by  the  President.  We  had 
some  amusing  cases  with  members  of  the  Ammish^  church, 
including  their  Bishop,  who  was  accused  of  advising  men 
not  to  comply  with  the  draft  order.  This  man  caused  the 
county  boards  a  great  deal  of  trouble.  He  would  not  come 
in  and  talk  with  the  military  authorities,  but  the  A.  P.  L. 
brought  him  in.  You  have  to  know  these  people  to  appreci- 
ate the  obstructions  they  will  put  around  all  draft  matters. 

Coshocton,  Ohio,  had  fifteen  citizens  who  were  suspected 
of  being  disloyal,  and  thirty  who  talked  too  much.  Mem- 
bers worked  when  the  thermometer  was  twenty  below  zero, 
trying  to  catch  parties  who  were  tearing  down  and  mutilat- 
ing Liberty  Loan  posters. 


388  THE  WEB 

A  quite  usual  form  of  report  comes  from  Washington 
Courthouse,  Ohio  —  and  it  is  one  of  the  best  sorts  of  reports: 
"  Assisted  in  the  sale  of  Liberty  Bonds  and  Stamps  to  the 
amount  of  $150,000 ;  rounded  up  slackers,  and  did  investiga- 
tion work  for  the  Red  Cross.  We  had  much  automobile 
travel.  In  the  eight  hundred  cases  that  we  investigated, 
our  men  traveled  more  than  twenty-five  thousand  miles  by 
auto,  half  of  this  mileage  being  covered  by  one  man. ' ' 


INDIANA 

Indianapolis,  Indiana,  attributes  much  of  its  success  to  the 
care  with  which  its  membership  was  selected.  All  new  mem- 
bers were  brought  in  by  other  members  who  were  acquainted 
with  them,  and  were  in  a  position  to  know  of  their  loyalty. 
The  Chief  says :  ' '  Our  men  conducted  themselves  with  dig- 
nity, tact  and  discretion,  bearing  in  mind  at  all  times  that 
they  were  representing  the  Government  and  the  League.  We 
believe  that  much  of  our  success  in  keeping  down  propa- 
ganda, sabotage  and  other  Hun  depredations  was  due  to  the 
secrecy  which  guarded  the  identity  of  our  officers.  Indian- 
apolis had  a  total  of  209  cases  of  disloyalty  and  sedition." 

Indianapolis  caught  one  deserter  1,200  miles  from  home. 
He  deserted  from  the  Rainbow  Division  at  the  port  of  em- 
barkation and  headed  west.  He  was  found,  working  under 
an  alias,  in  a  camp  forty  miles  from  Casper,  Wyoming. 
This  case  was  started  within  fifty  feet  of  the  Indianapolis 
headquarters,  through  overhearing  a  chance  conversation  in 
which  a  woman  said  that  a  friend  of  hers  was  correspond- 
ing with  a  man  she  thought  to  be  a  deserter.  The  suspect  at 
first  denied  he  was  the  man  wanted,  but  finally  confessed,  and 
w^as  delivered  to  the  proper  authorities.  The  whole  case  was 
finished  inside  of  two  hours,  the  order  for  the  man's  arrest 
going  by  wire  to  Casper  from  the  Department  of  Justice. 
Another  man  deserted  from  Camp  Sherman,  Ohio,  and  with- 
out coming  back  home  to  Indianapolis,  went  to  Hastings, 
Michigan.  Here,  through  a  woman  who  passed  as  his  wife, 
he  had  gotten  a  novelty  concession  at  the  County  Fair. 
Indianapolis  A.  P.  L.  got  in  touch  with  M.  I.  D.  of  Wash- 
ington.    Everything  was  waiting  for  the  gentleman  on  his 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  389 

arrival  at  Hastings.  He  is  again  in  the  Army  —  or  was  at 
the  time  of  the  Armistice. 

Though  wireless  scares  are  most  frequent  on  the  seaboard, 
almost  every  city  can  boast  several  of  them.  An  Indian- 
apolis operative  thought  he  had  discovered  certain  wireless 
antennae  on  the  property  of  a  family  with  a  German  name. 
A  pole  was  found  fastened  to  the  roof  of  a  shed,  wires  being 
used  to  connect  it  withi  the  attic  of  the  house.  It  was  noticed 
that  the  attic  had  close-drawn  blinds,  whence  lights_  were 
occasionally  seen.  The  whole  thing  simmered  down  to  an 
outfit  put  up  by  some  young  men  to  practice  telegraphy. 

Indianapolis  also  became  interested  in  a  man  who  claimed 
exemption  on  account  of  heart  trouble.  He  weighed  225 
pounds,  and  stood  six  feet  and  one-half  inch,  though  he  was 
only  twenty-five  years  old.  It  was  arranged  to  have  this 
man  examined  by  an  out-of-town  physician.  This  resulted 
in  his  being  brought  before  the  medical  board  in  Cleveland, 
where  he  was  found  fit  for  military  service.  There  was  no 
direct  evidence  that  he  had  been  taking  any  depressant  for 
his  heart,  although  the  facts  were  thought  to  point  that 
way.  It  was  said  that  some  doctors  gave  slackers  medicine 
to  give  them  temporary  "  heart  disease."  ' 

Michigan  City,  Indiana,  had  a  very  busy  A.  P.  L.  division 
whose  activities  were  sometimes  curious.  For  instance,  the 
town  boasts  a  somewhat  well  advertised  mayor,  Fred  C. 
Miller,  who  has  made  Michigan  City  famous  as  being  the 
proud  possessor  of  the  only  alien  mayor  in  the  United  States. 
Miller  openly  violated  the  President's  proclamation  barring 
alien  enemies  from  Washington,  D.  C.  He  was  held  until  a 
thorough  investigation  could  be  completed,  and  during  this 
investigation  A.  P.  L.  furnished  D.  J.  with  a  report  showing 
that  twenty-one  of  the  city  officials  and  employees  of  Mich- 
igan City  also  were  alien  enemies !  It  would  seem  that 
America  has  not  yet  been  discovered  at  the  foot  of  Lake 
Michigan.  The  loyal  minority  of  the  population,  during  the 
mayoralty  campaign,  turned  over  information  to  A.  P.  L.  to 
the  effect  that  one  hundred  and  forty-four  alien  enemies 
had  failed  to  comply  with  the  President's  proclamation 
obliging  them  to  register.  A  number  of  these  were  placed 
under  bonds.  Indeed,  with  the  assistance  of  the  League, 
the  U.  S.  Marshal's  office  registered  a  total  of  2,200  male 


390  THE  WEB 

and  female  alien  enemies.  A.  P.  L.  developed  the  evidence  on 
which  one  Herman  Kauffman  was  interned  at  Fort  Ogle- 
thorpe. This  division  also  caused  something  over  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  draft  evaders  to  be  taken  before  the  local 
board  as  the  result  of  a  three  months'  drive  under  cover, 
which  combed  all  the  factories  and  railroad  yards. 

At  Peru,  Indiana,  A.  P.  L.  worked  in  combination  with 
the  ' '  Loyal  Citizens '  Vigilance  Committee  of  Miami  County, ' ' 
an  earlier  organization  of  loyalty  lovers  which  embraced 
about  three  thousand  members  of  the  hundred  percent-loyal 
class.  Mr.  F.  D.  Butler  was  chief,  and  Mr.  W.  F.  Schrader, 
head  of  the  Vigilance  Committee,  assistant  chief  of  A.  P.  L. 
The  two  organizations  appear  to  have  had  amiable  and 
efficient  relations.  There  is  something  in  the  character  of 
the  Peru  Vigilance  Committee  which  seems  to  be  reminiscent 
of  the  old  '*  Know  Nothing  ''  party  which  had  existence 
before  the  Civil  War,  and  whose  general  platform  was  that 
of  America  for  Americans.  Does  this  Indiana  Vigilance 
Committee,  indeed,  foreshadow  a  revival  of  some  such  polit- 
ical movement  at  a  later  date?  It  seems  to  have  retained 
some  of  the  tenets  of  the  old  Know  Nothing  party,  which 
also  worked  in  absolute  secrecy,  and  had  its  grips,  pass  words 
and  countersigns. 

One  may  recall  that  it  was  an  Indiana  poet  who  wrote  the 
line,  '*  The  Booger  man  will  get  you  if  you  don't  watch 
out. ' '  At  least,  between  A.  P.  L.  and  the  Vigilantes,  a  good 
and  sufficient  scare  seems  to  have  been  thrown  into  the  dis- 
loyal element  around  Peru. 

There  is  grit,  shrewdness  and  loyalty  all  combined  in  the 
report  of  the  Chief  of  Rensselaer,  Indiana,  division.  It  is 
too  good  to  change  and  the  cases  cited  are  given  in  the  Chief's 
own  words : 

I  am  also  sending  you  a  few  sketches  of  our  work;  if  you 
can  use  them  in  the  history  of  the  League  it  will  be  appre- 
ciated.   I  am  very  much  interested  in  the  history. 

First  Case:  There  were  numerous  complaints  and  rumors 
of  pro-Germanism  and  disloyalty  in  Northern  Jasper  County. 
Our  operatives  got  a  great  many  affidavits  against  a  certain 

Lutheran  minister,  and  an  enemy  alien  named  Herman  S , 

who  had  been  bragging  that  no  one  could  make  him  register. 
Accompanied  by  an  operative,  I  took  my  car  one  Sunday  and 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  391 

we  went  out  to  S 's  house  and  the  following  conversa- 
tion took  place* 

Q.  Herman,  why  haven't  you  registered  as  the  law  requires 
you  to? 

A.  Well,  I  supposed  that  my  father  had  taken  out  his  papers 
and  I  did  not  need  to  register. 

Q.  Well,  how  did  it  come  that  your  brother  Paul  registered; 
he  must  have  understood  the  law? 

A.     S tiushed  up,  but  did  not  answer. 

Q.  Well,  Herman,  you  had  better  come  in  to-morrow  and 
register. 

A.  But  I  have  some  oats  that  have  to  be  harrowed,  and  I 
can't  come  in. 

Q.  Well,  all  right,  if  you  would  rather  harrow  your  oats 
and  not  register  and  spend  the  remainder  of  the  time  of  the 
war  in  a  Federal  prison,  you  harrow  the  oats. 

He  registered  Monday. 

On  this  same  expedition  we  stopped  to  see  the  Lutheran 
minister  as  private  citizens,  and  told  him  that  the  people  of 
Jasper  County  wanted  no  more  German  preaching  and  no  more 
German  teaching  in  the  schools;  also  they  would  like  to  see 
Old  Glory  floating  from  the  mast-head.  We  told  him  also  that 
this  was  the  last  time  that  he  would  be  notified.  In  about 
three  hours  we  returned  that  way  and  stopped  again.  Old 
Glory  was  floating  at  the  mast-head;  the  German  school  books 
had  disappeared,  and  there  has  been  no  more  German  teaching 
nor  preaching. 

Second  Case:  The  Local  Board  gave  the  name  of  Harrison 
L ,  who  had  registered  in  Carrolton,  Green  County,  Illi- 
nois, but  had  not  reported  for  physical  examination  at  Rens- 
selaer. He  was  living  with  his  parents  nine  miles  south  of 
this  city,  and  he  should  have  reported  to  the  Local  Board  of 
Rensselaer  for  physical  examination.  I  went  out  as  a  deputy 
sheriff  to  find  out  the  reason  why.  I  first  called  at  the  post 
office  at  McCoysburt,  where  they  got  their  mail,  and  found  that 
he  had  received  his  card  calling  him  for  examination.  I  then 
drove  out  to  the  farm  and  found  the  young  man,  and  he 
claimed  that  he  had  not  received  the  card.  I  finally  told  him 
that  he  would  have  to  go  with  me.  He  replied  that  he  would 
have  to  see  his  father.  We  went  out  into  the  cornfield  where 
Mr.  L was  picking  corn,  and  when  I  told  him  my  busi- 
ness, he  exploded.  He  called  Mr.  Wilson  a  Czar,  and  the 
United  States  Government  almost  everything  he  could  lay  his 

tongue  to,  and  then  I  asked:     "Mr.  L ,  what  are  you,  a 

German?    About  five  more  words  of  your  talk  and  I  will  take 


392  THE  WEB 

you  along,  too."  He  had  no  more  to  say  of  a  violent  nature, 
but  evidently  felt  very  hostile. 

I  brought  the  boy  in.  He  passed  the  physioal  examination 
and  was  placed  in  Class  I.  I  told  him  that  probably  he  would 
be  called  to  entrain  in  June.  I  tried  to  get  him  to  tell  me 
whether  or  not  he  would  be  here  to  entrain,  and  he  said: 
"Yes,  sure,  I  have  learned  my  lesson  and  will  be  in." 

In  the  meantime,  Mr.  L ,  Sr.,  had  been  talking  wildly 

and  saying  that  he  would  rather  see  his  son  dead  than  in  the 
Army  of  the  United  States.  He  also  said  that  if  anybody  came 
out  to  get  his  son  and  make  him  go  over  there  and  fight  the 
rich  man's  battles,  they  would  have  to  take  him  over  his 
dead  body. 

I  finally  got  in  touch  with  Mr.  P ,  whose  son  married 

L 's  daughter.     He  went  over  to  see  L and  told 

him  that  if  the  boy  was  not  in  by  nine  o'clock  on  the  day  of 
entrainment,    the    officers    would    have    to    come    after    him. 

L replied  that  if  they   did  come  out  there,  he  had  a 

double-barreled  shot-gun  loaded  with  buck-shot  and  would  let 
the  first  man  that  stepped  on  the  place  have  it. 

Nine  o'clock  the  next  morning  I  took  one  of  my  operatives 
and  a  good  30-30  rifle  and  went  out  there;  drove  in  the  gate 
as  fast  as  I  could  make  it,  and  caught  the  old  gentleman  in 
the  barn. 

L had  mislaid  his  shot-gun,  but  his  wife  found  it, 

and  was  approaching  him  with  it.     After  quite  a  tussle,  we 

convinced  Mrs.  L that  she  had  no  use  for  a  gun,  and  I 

took  it  away  from  her. 

In  the  meantime  their  loyal,  patriotic  son  had  started  for 
Monon,  about  six  miles  from  the  farm,  to  get  some  mower 
repairs.    I  left  my  operative  on  the  premises,  and  started  after 

young  L in  the  car.     I  found  him  about  three  miles 

from  the  farm,  jogging  along  with  his  thoughts  dwelling  on 
the  hardships  of  war.  I  stopped  him  and  told  him  he  would 
have  to  go  with  me,  and  he  said:  "Well,  what  will  I  do  with 
the  horse  and  buggy."  I  replied  that  that  was  not  worrying 
me,  that  I  wanted  him.  He  tied  the  horse  to  the  fence,  and 
I  took  him  in  the  car  and  went  back  to  the  farm.  I  told  him 
that  if  he  would  go  like  a  man,  I  would  give  him  five  minutes 
to  change  his  clothes  and  get  in  the  car  and  go  with  me 
to  entrain. 

He  was  ready  in  three  minutes  and  thirty-five  seconds.  I 
took  him  to  Fort  Benjamin  Harrison  and  turned  him  over  to 
the  Provost  Marshal.  This  man  was  inducted  into  the  Army, 
and  has  been  in  France  shooting  Huns. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  393 

These  cases  do  not  exhaust  the  files  of  Rensselaer.  There 
are  more  of  the  same  sort,  but  these  give  a  good  idea  of  the 
sort  of  problems  which  tested  the  courage,  ability  and  re- 
sourcefulness of  A.  P.  L.  operatives  and  chiefs  throughout 
the  war. 

Elkhart,  Indiana,  is  present  or  accounted  for  in  almost 
every  branch  of  the  service.  The  Chief  says:  ''  We  found 
most  of  our  cases  pro-German,  with  some  spite  work.  Elk- 
hart Division  handled  a  total  of  600  cases  of  all  sorts,  of 
which  117  were  concerned  with  alien  enemy  activities.  A 
number  of  reports  were  investigated  which  charged  certain 
German  sympathizers  with  offering  up  prayers  in  church  for 
the  Kaiser  and  the  success  of  the  German  arms.  There 
would  seem  to  be  no  use  in  praying  for  the  Kaiser  now." 

One  of  the  most  American  parts  of  Indiana  is  good  old 
Brown  County,  long  famous  because  there  is  no  railroad 
within  its  confines.  The  Chief  reports:  "  This  has  been 
a  quiet  sector.  Our  people  are  native  stock,  absolutely  loyal 
and  patriotic.  A  few  late-comers  of  German  origin  began 
to  talk  too  much,  but  when  they  found  they  were  being 
watched,  they  stopped.  It  is  good  to  live  in  an  old-fash- 
ioned American  community  such  as  we  usually  read  about 
in  books. ' ' 

MICHIGAN 

Perhaps  not  many  people  in  the  United  States  have  heard 
of  Midland,  Michigan  —  it  is  one  of  the  many  new  names 
on  the  war  map.  But  the  Midland  report  —  iin  many  ways 
the  best  report  turned  in  by  any  A.  P.  L.  chief  in  the  entire 
country  —  bulked  large  and  was  very  thorough  indeed;  in 
short,  it  was  a  day-by-day  record  and  report  of  activities  in 
a  town  engaged  in  making  deadly  gases  and  other  chemicals 
for  use  in  the  war.  Midland  is  the  site  of  the  Dow  Chemical 
Company's  chief  plant,  a  concern  which  manufactured  ace- 
tone for  airplane  dope,  mustard  gas,  T.  N.  T.  and  a  number 
of  other  special  products  for  the  Government.  As  a  conse- 
quence it  seems  to  have  been  a  magnet  for  alien  enemy  work- 
men and  American  laborers  with  pro-German  sjTnjpathies. 
Something  broke  loose  almost  every  day ;  on  some  days,  two, 
three  or  even  four  cases  came  up.  Altogether  the  Midland 
report  is  an  extraordinary  document  —  indeed  the  most  ver- 


394  THE  WEB 

itable  and  illuminating  day-to-day  record  of  all  which  the 
League  has  produced.  This  blotter  form  of  report  supplies 
a  remarkable  narrative  of  the  chances  and  near-casualties 
which  the  presence  of  a  munitions  plant  brought  to  a  normal 
American  community.  It  is  too  bad  such  a  report  cannot 
be  given  in  full,  but  it  runs  to  12,000  words,  spans  ten  months 
of  time  and  covers  one  hundred  and  fifty-seven  cases  of 
investigation.  This  splendid  report  came  out  of  a  wholly 
unexpected  quarter.  We  hear  much  of  the  romance  of  big 
business.  Perhaps  when  the  reader  shall  have  discovered 
how  many  men  were  waiting  day-by-day  to  wreck  and  ruin 
one  big  business,  it  will  not  alwaj^s  seem  to  have  been  so 
romantic  after  all.  We  may  make  at  least  a  brief  resume 
of  things  which  happened  in  and  around  Midland.  Names 
cannot  be  given,  but  it  may  be  stated  in  advance  that  practi- 
cally every  case  investigated  was  that  of  a  man  who  had  a 
German,  Russian  or  European  name. 

Carl  L was  a  German  Lutheran  minister  at  Mid- 
land, and  seems  to  have  been  much  like  his  brethren  of  the 
cloth  in  that  denomination.  He  remarked  to  a  friend, 
'*  Why,  you  do  not  seem  to  realize  that  Germany  will  soon 
control  the  world. ' '  When  the  Lusitania  was  sunk,  he  said, 
'  ^  The  people  who  went  on  that  ship  should  have  been  blown 
sky-high. ' '     Preacher  L is  still  preaching  at  Midland. 

Alex  B is  a  retired  citizen  of  Midland.     He  was 

bom  in  Germany,  came  to  this  country  penniless,  yet  acquired 
sufficient  wealth  upon  which  to  retire.  This  country  is  full 
of  Germans  of  similar  description,  who  have  remained  just 
as  German  as  they  ever  were.     This  was  the  case  of  Mr. 

B .     In  discussing  the  war,  he  said,  **  You  can't  get 

your  troops  over  there  because  our  submarines  will  sink 
them."  By  "your  "  he  meant  American  troops,  and  by 
*'  our  "  he  meant  German  submarines.  He  was  of  the 
belief  that  the  German  was  a  far  superior  race  to  ours. 
Natiirlich  !     Gewiss !     Das  versteht  sich  ! 

S.  F.  S ,  another  employe,  was  found  taking  pic- 
tures of  one  of  the  buildings  devoted  to  the  making  of  sul- 
phuric acid,  including  the  railroad  approaches.  United 
States  asked  him  please  not  to  take  any  more  such  pictures. 

A  can  containing  a  pint  of  giant  powder  was  found  in  a 
car  of  coal  which  was  being  hoisted  into  the  boilers  at  the 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  '  395 

power  house  of  the  Dow  Chemical  Company.     Two  Germans, 

J.  O.  M and  Carl  S ,  were  heard  talking  of 

prospective  trouble  at  the  Dow  Company.  The  former  said, 
'  ^  I  have  a  bottle  planted  near  the  gate  that  they  will  hear 
from."  Both  men  were  watched,  and  their  plot  seems  t© 
have  been  aborted. 

John  S once  claimed  he  was  German,  then  claimed 

he  was  Russian.  He  could  not  speak  nor  write  Russian, 
but  was  familiar  with  the  German  language  and  associated 
only  with  Germans  of  the  hostile  type.  He  attended  the 
German-Lutheran  church  and  was  very  insolent  toward 
Americans.  Whether  German  or  Russian,  he  was  discharged 
by  the  Dow  Chemical  Company.  He  found  his  solace  in 
conversation  at  the  German  store,  run  by  two  Germans,  all 
enjoying  themselves  very  much,  conversing  and  settling  the 
war. 

Ernest  W ,  reported  as  an  alien  enemy  in  the  pay  of 

the  German  Government,  a  sailor  on  the  Great  Lakes  in  the 
summer  time.  Reported  to  the  steamship  company  of  Cleve- 
land which  used  to  employ  him. 

C.  B works  for  the  Dow  Chemical  Company.  Oper- 
ative reports  he  said  United  States  was  to  blame  for  the 
war  and  that  Germany  had  told  the  people  of  the  United 
States  not  to  board  English  ships.  All  of  which  sounds 
familiar  —  if  not  convincing  —  to  an  American.     Ja  wohl ! 

John  "W ,  reported  pro-German,  had  expressed  him- 
self as  opposed  to  the  United  States  in  the  war.  Since  we 
declared  war,  has  been  more  discreet.     A  common  case. 

H.  S ,  in  the  army  cantonment,  but  reported  to  have 

stated  he  would  desert  as  quickly  as  he  got  to  France.  His 
officers  duly  notified. 

E.  L.  K ,  a  foreman  in  the  wood  shop  of  the  Dow 

Chemical  Company,  reported  to  be  willing  to  bet  $100  that 
the  United  States  would  never  whip  Germany.  Too  bad 
someone  did  not  take  him  up  several  times !  Ach !  das  thut 
uns  leid ! 

A.  B.  B ,  reported  by  some  patent  attorneys  to  have 

appeared  at  their  office  desiring  the  Russian  patent  for  a 
dinner  pail  which  would  be  capable  of  containing  several 
sticks  of  dynamite  hidden  in  coils.  A  compartment  for  a 
clock  was  also  called  for.     This  would  be  a  fine  thing  for  a 


396  THE  WEB 

workman  to  take  into  a  building  such  as  this  Government 
enterprise.  The  attorneys  did  not  care  for  confidential  rela- 
tions with  such  a  client.  Close  watch  was  kept  for  three 
weeks,  but  the  client  did  not  come  back. 

John  G said  when  the  Lusitania  was  sunk,  **  What 

in  hell  were  the on  that  boat  for,  anyway  — 

were  they  not  warned  to  keep  off?  "  Which  again  sounds 
familiar.  Indeed,  that  was  the  attitude  of  practically  every 
German  or  pro-German  in  America,  no  matter  whether  nat- 
uralized or  not. 

Alma,  Michigan,  is  a  pleasant  and  quiet  city,  but  you  can't 
tell  where  a  big  story  will  break.  Drama  is  no  respecter  of 
geography.     Which  is  by  way  of  saying  that  one  Herman 

R is  reported  by  Gratiot  County  Division  to  have  been 

raised  on  a  farm  in  this  locality.  During  the  war  he  went 
to  Spokane,  Washington,  and  joined  the  I.  W.  W.  He  was 
indicted  among  others  in  the  Haywood  trial  and  disappeared 
while  waiting  for  trial.  Gratiot  County  Division  was 
directed  to  look  him  up. 

A  visit  was  made  to  the  sister  of  R ,  who  herself 

appeared  as  much  an  I.  W.  W.  as  need  be.  Through  per- 
sistence, however,  they  learned  where  Herman  was  approx- 
imately. It  was  concluded  that  the  brother  and  sister  might 
correspond,  so  the  mails  were  watched.  Sure  enough,  on 
the  third  day  there  came  a  letter  from  Spokane  addressed 
to  another  sister,  and  bearing  the  Spokane  postmark.  Then 
a  brother  of  Herman  was  visited,  and  from  him  and  from  his 
unmarrried  sister  a  snapshot  was  obtained  of  Herman  and 
his  pal,  each  holding  an  I.  W.  W.  paper  facing  toward  the 
camera,  which  sufficiently  well  identified  them  and  their 
tendencies. 

Later  on  both  Herman  and  his  pal  were  located,  appre- 
hended, tried,  convicted,  and  sentenced  in  the  Chicago  trial. 

Ottawa  County,  Michigan,  has  in  its  population  a  large 
percentage  of  people  of  Dutch  descent.  There  are  also  many 
immigrants  from  Holland,  some  naturalized,  others  not. 
Most  of  these  people  have  an  inborn  hatred  for  England, 
which  was  mistakenly  called  pro-Germanism.  A  correct  under- 
standing of  the  psychology  of  these  people  was  no  easy  mat- 
ter to  arrive  at,  but  the  A.  P.  L.  handled  most  of  them  in 
such  a  way  as  to  convert  them  into  patriots  rather  than 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  397 

malcontents.  The  Chief  adds,  however:  "  It  should  not  be 
gathered  from  this  that  our  population  as  a  whole  was  not 
heart  and  soul  for  America.  We  rarely  met  anything  vicious 
in  the  way  of  disloyalty.  Hollanders  are  ultra- Calvinistic, 
unemotional  and  not  easily  stirred  to  enthusiasm,  and  it  was 
sometimes  difficult  to  reach  their  hearts  with  feelings  of 
patriotism  and  love  for  the  land  of  their  adoption. ' ' 

Washtenaw  County,  Michigan,  had  the  reputation  of  being 
the  worst  pro-German  conununity  in  the  Eastern  Division  of 
Michigan.  Fully  four  percent  of  the  people  were  pro-Ger- 
man. Large  districts  are  nothing  but  old  German  settle- 
ments, ''  infested  with  that  worst  brand  of  citizen  —  the  sec- 
ond or  third  generation  German."  The  Chief  instituted  a 
series  of  Star  Chamber  courts  which  put  a  wet  blanket  on 
this  gentry  and  changed  Washtenaw  County  into  one  of  the 
quietest  communities  in  the  State.  The  A.  P.  L.  men  were 
not  known  to  one  another,  but  they  were  in  all  strata  of 
society.  They  uncovered  several  rampant  cases  of  Bolshe- 
vism and  conducted  a  good  many  character  and  loyalty  inves- 
tigations. They  investigated  also  144  alien  enemies  who 
applied  for  naturalization.  The  total  niunber  of  alien 
enemies  investigated  ran  above  700,  so  it  may  be  seen  that 
this  organization  was  kept  pretty  busy. 

Ludington,  Michigan,  looked  into  fifty  cases  of  disloyalty 
and  sedition,  and  investigated  six  hundred  case-s  of  oral 
propaganda.  The  Chief  says:  "We  investigated  about  two 
thousand  cases ;  delivered  upwards  of  two  hundred  speeches 
for  the  Red  Cross ;  nullified  three  strikes  of  workmen  —  one 
on  the  railroad,  and  the  other  two  in  plants  doing  govern- 
ment work.  Over  seven  hundred  men  were  involved. ' '  Lud- 
ington also  reports  the  case  of  a  German  reservist  who  was 
traced  from  this  point  to  France,  from  there  to  Winnipeg, 
thence  to  Seattle,  thence  to  Chicago.  The  suspect  was  finally 
apprehended  in  Chicago  and  interned.     Real  sleuthing! 

Benton  Harbor,  Michigan,  is  adjacent  to  strongly  German 
neighborhoods.  There  were  1,000  men  who  signed  up  for 
League  work,  each  man  contributing  one  dollar  to  the  com- 
mon fund.  The  county  was  split  up  into  five  districts,  each 
manned  by  a  lieutenant  and  several  operatives  under  him. 
A  general  secrecy  obtained  as  to  the  membership,  and  the 
division  was  very  active  and  efficient. 


398  THE  WEB 

Grand  Rapids,  Michigan,  was  a  busy  center  of  activity, 
and  one  of  the  best-handled  divisions  in  the  United  States, 
3,907  cases  being  investigated,  exclusive  of  about  500  minor 
cases  in  regard  to  German  language.  Liberty  Loan,  War 
Savings  Stamps  and  other  miscellaneous  cases.  Of  the  grand 
total,  2,357  cases  were  investigated  under  the  "work  or 
fight  "  order.  A.  P.  L.  at  Grand  Rapids  had  a  busy  season, 
and  did  its  work  well.  It  deserves  as  many  pages  as  it  is 
given  lines. 

Iron  River,  Michigan,  had  the  usual  routine.     One  case, 

slightly  unusual,   had  to  do  with  one  Victor  F ,   a 

Swede  fifty-eight  years  old,  naturalized  in  America.  He  re- 
luctantly admitted  a  pro-German  tendency,  but  as  he  had 
sa  large  family,  the  local  chief  was  disposed  to  leniency. 
The  Chief  says :  * '  I  had  previously  learned  that  this  man, 
with  his  family,  was  worth  about  $8,000.  I  had  him  agree 
to  purchase  $2,000  worth  of  Liberty  Bonds  at  once  and 
to  leave  them  in  the  custody  of  the  local  bank  until  the  end 
of  the  war.  He  also  contributed  $300  to  the  local  war 
chest,  and  agreed  to  aid  soliciting  committees  among  his 
neighbors.  He  has  kept  his  promise  in  these  respects,  and  has 
kept  silent  about  the  war. ' '    - 

Manistee,  Michigan,  is  in  one  of  the  most  pro-German 
counties  of  the  State.  A  number  of  German  agents  had  a 
sort  of  representative  at  Manistee.  There  were  seventy-eight 
residents  who  swore  fealty  to  Germany,  although  only 
twenty-one  of  these  remained  loyal  during  the  closing  days 
of  the  war.  Not  infrequently  times  became  a  trifle  heated 
at  Manistee.  German  sympathizers  once  shot  at  the  Chief 
of  the  A.  P.  L.,  who  had  just  apprehended  several  German 
suspects  who  were  accused  of  making  blue-prints  of  pumps 
going  into  United  States  battleships.  The  organization  was 
active  throughout  the  war,  and  was  on  its  toes  at  all  times. 

Mount  Clemens,  Michigan,  is  in  Macomb  County,  a  large 
proportion  of  whose  inhabitants  are  of  German  origin.  A 
flying  field  is  located  near  Mount  Clemens.  Hence  a  special 
officer  of  the  Department  of  Justice  was  in  charge.  Most  of 
the  work  had  to  do  with  pro-Germanism,  ninety-seven  of  such 
cases  being  investigated.  There  were  seven  cases  of  alien 
enemy  activities,  two  of  sabotage,  fifty-six  connected  with 
selective  service  matters,  thirty  of  character  and  loyalty. 


THE  STORY  OP  THE  NORTH  399 

and  seven  of  food-hoarding.     No  grass  grew  under  the  feet 
of  this  division. 

ILLINOIS 

There  ought  to  be  at  least  one  good  stiff  report  from  some 
town  located  near  a  big  Army  cantonment.  Eockford,  Illi- 
nois, entry  point  for  Camp  Grant,  has  submitted  a  report 
which  meets  every  specification.  It  must  be  understood  that 
from  30,000  to  75,000  troops  came  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
Rockford  Division  each  couple  of  months  or  so  throughout 
the  war.  Rockford  is  a  great  manufacturing  point  and 
for  some  time  has  been  a  center  of  I.  W.  W.  activities,  a 
considerable  number  of  I.  "W.  W.  clan  being  found  among 
the  laboring  classes  there.  The  League  watched  these  people 
very  closely,  secured  stenographic  reports  of  their  club 
speeches,  etc.,  and  thus  got  some  strong  Government  evidence. 

After  war  was  declared,  these  agitators  became  very  vio- 
lent, and  carried  on  an  active  compaign  against  the  Selective 
Service  Act.  On  one  occasion  they  conducted  an  all-day 
meeting  and  picnic  at  Black  Hawk  Park,  which  was  nothing 
but  an  organization  meeting  so  timed  as  to  interfere  with 
the  draft  registration.  We  locked  up  three  men,  at  which 
the  other  members  of  the  two  local  unions  thronged  the 
streets  to  the  jail  and  demanded  the  release  of  the  men.  We 
put  an  additional  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  members  of  the 
I.  W.  W.  in  jail,  and  standing  room  only  was  available. 
Special  interurban  cars  were  chartered,  eighty  persons  being 
removed  to  adjacent  counties.  The  jail  was  pretty  badly 
wrecked.  The  leader  of  these  men  got  two  years  imprison- 
ment, it  being  proved  also  that  he  was  an  alien  and  subject 
to  deportation.  The  Immigration  Bureau  has  secured  a  war- 
rant for  his  deportation,  and  he  will  go  abroad  permanently 
at  the  expiration  of  his  sentence.  Federal  Judge  Landis 
sentenced  one  hundred  and  eleven  of  these  men  to  one  year 
in  the  Bridewell  at  Chicago.  This  case  has  been  referred 
to  in  the  report  of  Mr.  Colby,  D.  J.  agent  at  Chicago,  as  one 
of  the  most  important  in  the  Western  country.  A  special 
agent  was  sent  out  by  the  Department  of  Justice  to  Rock- 
ford,  with  the  result  that  an  office  was  established  there  to 
carry  on  the  joint  work  more  efficiently. 


400  THE  WEB 

After  Camp  Grant  was  located  at  Rockford,  the  A.  P.  L. 
had  much  more  work  to  do.  While  the  buildings  were  going 
up,  about  50,000  men  passed  through  the  employment  bureau, 
from  7,000  to  10,000  being  employed  in  the  work.  All  classes 
of  men  were  attracted  to  Rockford,  and  the  local  division 
was  busy  in  keeping  watch  over  them.  Thirty -five  I.  W.  W. 
members  were  taken  from  the  camp  laborers  and  handled  in 
different  ways  —  always  with  encouragement  to  go  away 
and  stay  away.  Two  alien  enemies  were  found  among  the 
laboring  men  at  Rockford.  They  had  come  to  America  sur- 
reptitiously after  the  war  began  in  Europe  and  had  worked 
at  various  cantonments.  They  finally  admitted  they  were 
German  subjects,  and  were  interned  for  the  war.  After  the 
cantonment  was  completed  and  the  troops  began  to  arriveT, 
the  divisional  activities  of  the  A.  P.  L.  centered  largely  in 
the  detection  of  violations  having  to  do  with  the  morale  of 
the  troops.  Five  operatives  were  put  to  work  on  liquor 
cases,  all  working  together  under  cover.  Twenty-six  men 
were  sentenced  for  supplying  soldiers  with  liquor,  getting  an 
average  of  ten  months'  imprisonment  each. 

The  most  notable  case  handled  in  Camp  Grant,  or  in  any 
other  camp,  was  that  which  resulted  in  the  court-martial  of 

twenty-one  negro  soldiers.     Louise  S ,  a  white  woman 

visiting  a  white  soldier  at  Camp  Grant,  was  set  upon  and 
assaulted  by  fifteen  to  twenty-one  negro  soldiers  on  the  night 
of  May  19,  the  crime  being  committed  on  the  reservation  at 
Camp  Grant.  At  nine  o'clock  that  evening  Major  General 
Charles  H.  Martin,  in  command  at  Camp  Grant,  telephoned 
to  the  local  chief  to  meet  him  in  town.  He  said  his  officers 
had  been  unable  to  make  any  headway  on  the  case,  and  asked 
that  it  be  taken  up  by  the  Department  of  Justice.  The 
League  put  men  on  the  case,  and  in  three  days  had  twenty 
of  the  culprits  in  custody,  ultimately  securing  confessions  im- 
plicating all  the  others  who  were  held.  All  of  these  men 
were  tried  by  court-martial ;  fifteen  were  convicted  and  dealt 
with,  five  were  let  go,  and  one  was  declared  insane.  The 
assistance  of  the  civilian  authorities  and  auxiliaries  to  the 
military  arm  was  so  distinct  in  this  case  that  General  Martin 
wrote  a  frank  letter  of  thanks,  in  which  he  said:  "  I  am 
free  to  confess  that  until  your  entrance  into  the  game,  we 
had  not  progressed  very  far,  and  I  wish  to  make  it  of  record 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  401 

that  it  was  principally  due  to  your  able  and  efficient  service 
that  we  finally  succeeded." 

The  nature  and  extent  of  the  activities  of  the  Rockford 
division  may  be  seen  from  the  following  summary:  alien 
enemy  activities,  95;  citizens'  disloyalty  and  sedition,  50; 
sabotage,  5;  anti-military  activities,  13;  propaganda,  13; 
miscellaneous  cases,  21l/  The  Navj^  Department  asked  as- 
sistance in  55  cases.  Investigations  made  by  the  War  De- 
partment covered  21  for  Military  Intelligence;  242  under 
the  selective  service  regulations;  164  slackers;  45  character 
and  loyalty  applications;  90  liquor  cases;  44  cases  of  vice 
and  prostitution;  25  cases  of  desertions,  and  the  collection 
of  over  200  maps  and  photographs  for  M.  I.  D.  The 
Department  of  State  also  reaches  out  as  far  as  Rockford, 
and  the  quietly  efficient  League  handled  forty-six  passport 
cases  alone.  The  Treasury  Department  had  ten  cases  under 
War  Risk,  and  the  United  States  Shipping  Board  asked  for 
two  investigations  on  character  and  loyalty. 

In  the  nature  of  things,  the  activities  of  A.  P.  L.  being 
so  wide,  so  impartial,  and  at  times  so  energetic  and  aggres- 
sive, friction  of  social  or  business  sort  was  sure  now  and 
then  to  arise.  The  only  wonder  is  that  there  was  not  a  great 
deal  more  of  it.  Sometimes  this  grew  out  of  spite  work  and 
personal  jealousy,  and  again  resulted  in  clashes  of  a  wider 
and  more  distinct  sort,  resulting  in  something  like  community 
cliques. 

Mattoon,  Illinois,  had  this  sort  of  a  tempest  in  a  teapot 
from  some  such  causes.  That  towTi  has  a  Merchants'  Asso- 
ciation, and  this  association,  for  reasons  into  which  it  is  not 
necessary  to  go  here,  but  which  perhaps  had  a  personal  basis 
in  some  measure,  saw  fit  to  fine  certain  members  of  its  body 
who  had  contributed  money  for  the  organization  of  A.  P.  L. 
This  caused  considerable  hard  feeling.  The  Chief,  P.  A. 
Erlach,  asked  permission  to  explain  the  purposes  of  the 
League  to  the  Merchants'  Association.  This  permission  was 
not  granted.  The  Chief  held  a  conference  with  Judge  Mac- 
Intyre,  who  suggested  that  the  members  who  had  been  fined 
by  the  Merchants'  Association  might  be  subpoenaed  and 
brought  to  the  court  room,  not  for  trial,  but  for  the  purpose 
of  clearing  the  situation,  which  did  not  seem  to  be  good  for 
the  community  or  the  government.     The  Merchants '  Associa- 


402  THE  WEB 

tion  hired  a  lawyer  to  represent  them,  and  a  very  warm 
session  was  held,  out  of  which,  of  course,  nothing  was  deriv- 
able except  hard  feeling.  In  the  mutual  recriminations,  one 
member  of  the  Merchants'  Association  was  alleged  to  have 
remarked  at  a  certain  time:  "  After  this  war  is  over,  the 
Germans  will  be  the  aristocrats  of  the  world" — a  belief 
which  seems  to  have  lacked  confirmation.  All  these  mat- 
ters, however,  did  not  succeed  in  destroying  the  usefulness 
of  the  A.  P.  L.  in  Mattoon,  where  it  did  a  great  deal  of 
hard  and  conscientious  work. 

Probably  the  most  interesting  Mattoon   investigation   is 

that  of  one  0  'H ,  son  of  a  wealthy  farmer,  who  claimed 

exemption  on  account  of  agricultural  occupation.  He  was 
alleged  to  be  living  in  town  and  engaged  in  keeping  books. 
The  League  went  into  the  history  of  the  family  and  pro- 
duced   proof    that    certain    other    paternal    ancestors    of 

O'H had  been  engaged  in  the  so-called  Charleston 

Riots  during  the  civil  war,  when  a  band  of  men  known  as 
''  Copperheads,"     among     whom     was     an     ancestor     of 

0  'H ,  had  fired  upon  several  Union  soldiers  with  fatal 

results  in  several  instances.  The  Mattoon  Chief  of  A.  P.  L, 
submitted  to  the  Adjutant  General  at  Springfield,  Illinois, 
a  full  brief  of  the  investigation  of  the  case  of  young 
O'H ,  also  transcripts  from  Government  records  cov- 
ering the  Charleston  riots.     Young  O'H was  sent  to 

Camp  Zachariah  for  training. 

Pastor  Russell  had  certain  followers  in  Mattoon,  religious 
fanatics  of  the  sect  known  as  Truth-Believers.  They  did  not 
believe  in  anything  but  the  Truth,  certainlj^  not  in  Liberty 
Loans,  War  Savings  Stamps,  or  any  war  funds  or  activities. 
Two  members  of  the  sect  were  arraigned,  but  the  Federal 
grand  jury  did  not  indict  them  because  one  was  a  woman 
and  the  other  concluded  to  go  into  the  employment  of  the 
Government  at  Washington. 

Near  Mattoon  is  a  settlement  of  the  peculiar  sect  known 
as  Ammish,  whose  religion  tells  them  not  to  bear  arms.  They 
opposed  the  selective  draft,  and  although  it  was  determined 
to  exempt  their  young  men  from  actual  drill,  the  community 
preaching  became  so  bad  that  a  stiff  investigation  was  made, 
after  which  there  was  no  more  trouble. 

The  secret  of  the  Mattoon  fashion  of  investigation  is  not 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  403 

told,  but  a  number  of  case-reports  close  with  the  words: 
''  There  has  been  no  further  complaint  from  the  party." 
This  covers  the  case  of  several  citizens  who  did  not  buy  as 
many  Liberty  Bonds  as  they  might,  or  were  too  free  in  their 
talk  about  Germany  as  compared  with  this  country. 

Joliet,  Illinois,  has  certain  mills  which  harbor  a  large  for- 
eign element,  Austrians  and  others.  Several  arrests  and  one 
internment  put  a  quietus  on  German  propaganda  work  among 
these  people.  ^'  We  worked  through  local  foreign  priests  in 
whom  they  have  confidence,"  says  the  local  chief,  and  he 
adds:  "  We  feel  now  that  this  hotbed  of  Austrianism  is 
a  fertile  field  for  the  so-called  Bolshevist  movement,  as  the 
sort  of  people  most  frequently  dealt  with  are  very  susceptible 
to  this  propaganda.  They  feel  that  they  can  express  them- 
selves freely,  now  that  the  war  is  over,  and  they  are  pleased 
at  this  opportunity.  We  believe  that  there  is  still  much 
work  ahead  before  the  Bolshevist  movement  ceases  to  be  a 
menace  in  these  parts. ' ' 

Bloomington,  Illinois,  cites  as  its  stand-out  case  the  cap- 
ture of  a  German  sailor,  who  was  interned  with  the  Princess 
Irene,  the  German  boat  at  Hoboken,  and  had  broken  parole. 
The  Chief  says :  ' '  We  had  considerable  other  work  to  do  in 
conducting  investigations  and  in  stopping  the  propaganda 
of  loud-mouthed  Germans." 

Rock  Island,  Illinois,  is  one  of  the  most  famous  arsenal 
towns  in  the  country,  the  Ordnance  Department  having 
erected  large  works  there  many  years  ago.  All  such  posts 
were  danger  foci  during  the  war.  Rock  Island  Division  in- 
vestigated 382  disloyalty  and  sedition  cases,  and  138  cases 
of  propaganda.  The  selective  service  regulations  required 
548  investigations.  There  were  also  the  usual  number  of 
cases  taken  on  for  the  Housing  Committee  (it  was  a  big 
problem  to  house  Rock  Island's  war  population),  the  Red 
Cross,  the  U.  S.  Commissioner,  the  U.  S.  Marshal,  the  County 
Sheriff,  the  Liberty  Loan  committees  and  war  charities.  Cer- 
tainly a  very  satisfactory  record  for  a  place  where  some- 
thing might  have  blown  loose  had  enemy  wishes  come  true ! 

Epworth,  Illinois,  worked  in  close  touch  with  the  State 
Council  of  Defense.  The  Chief  reports :  ' '  Our  community 
was  loyal  during  the  Civil  War,  and  when  this  work  came 
on,  we  gladly  put  our  shoulder  to  the  wheel  again.     A  few 


404  THE  WEB 

said  things  quite  out  of  place,  but  you  can  believe  we  were 
never  Germanized  here.  Our  worst  enemies  were  those  who 
would  rather  part  with  their  sons  than  with  their  coin  — 
though  they  did  neither  willingly.  We  examined  some  appli- 
cants for  overseas  service. ' ' 

Alton,  Illinois,  just  across  the  river  from  St.  Louis,  had 
some  investigations  for  Military  Intelligence,  and  some  over- 
seas investigations.  The  division  had  occasion  to  assist  the 
Special  Agent  of  the  Department  of  Justice  in  St.  Louis  a 
number  of  times  when  quick  action  was  needed. 

WISCONSIN 

Justly  or  not,  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin,  had  the  reputation 
of  being  about  the  most  German  community  in  the  most 
nearly  German  state  of  the  Union.  No  sweeping  conclusions 
need  be  advanced  as  to  either  side  of  this  proposition  herein, 
for  evidently,  all  said  and  done,  Milwaukee  is  Milwaukee, 
and  is  well  known  throughout  the  country.  There  was  a 
time,  even  previous  to  our  entering  the  war  against  Ger- 
many, when  salesmen  traveling  out  of  Milwaukee  were  un- 
able to  sell  their  goods  to  the  retail  trade  throughout  the 
Middle  West.  They  were  obliged  to  go  back  to  their  houses 
and  to  say  that  the  city  which  they  represented  was  in  bad 
repute.  Just  or  not,  these  were  the  facts,  and  in  time  the 
better-class  business  men  of  Milwaukee,  most  of  whom  have 
not  lacked  in  loyalty,  began  to  see  that  some  remedy  must 
be  found  for  this  prejudice  existing  against  their  city. 

During  the  Civil  War  the  Germans  of  Wisconsin,  de- 
scendents  of  the  heavy  German  immigration  of  1848  and 
the  years  immediately  following,  had  a  splendid  representa- 
tion in  the  Northern  army.  The  sons  of  these  men  are  among 
the  most  prominent  business  men  in  Wisconsin  and  of  Mil- 
waukee to-day,  and  it  were  worse  than  wrong  loosely  to  accuse 
them  all  of  disloyalty  to  this  country.  Upon  the  other  hand, 
Milwaukee,  being  a  heavy  German  settlement,  did  not  lack 
in  wrong-headed  persons  who  retained  their  allegiance  to  a 
flag  other  than  our  own.  These  did  the  usual  amount  of 
talking  —  perhaps  more  than  the  usual  amount.  For  them 
the  Milwaukee  Division  of  the  American  Protective  League 
had  the  same  remedy  that  has  been  found  efficient  in  other 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  405 

communities  comprising  a  large  foreign  element  or  an  ele- 
ment with  foreign  sympathies.  It  went  to  work  quietly  and 
steadily,  showing  good  judgment  and  good  sense,  as  well  as 
good  patriotism.  Mr.  B.  K.  Miller  was  Chief  of  the  Mil- 
waukee Division.  The  membership  was  made  up  of  sub- 
stantial men  of  proven  loyalty.  The  following  table  tells 
the  story  of  their  work ; 

Alien  enemy  cases 10,000 

Sedition  and  disloyalty  investigations,  and  violations  of 

the  Espionage  Act 2,400 

Character  and  loyalty  reports 700 

Liquor  and  vice  cases 75 

Internments    '*^ 

Selective  Service  cases 6,500 

War  Risk  Insurance  cases 68 

Sparta,  Wisconsin,  from  the  spelling  of  the  suspect  names 
in  the  report,  appears  to  be  located  in  the  heart  of  darkest 

Germany.     One  ]\Ir.  H of  that  vicinity  declared  that 

a  letter  written  to  his  father  in  anything  but  the  German 
language  would  be  an  insult.  He  was  interviewed,  and  it 
is  believed  that  he  has  changed  his  idea  by  this  time.  An- 
other local  pro-German  volubly  declared  that  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
was  a  "  damn  fraud."     He  is  also  thinking  it  over.     Gus 

L would    not    allow    a    card    with   the    admonition, 

"  Speak  English,"  to  be  placed  in  his  store.     It  may  affect 

his  application  for  his  second  papers.     Carl  B was 

called  on  for  a  subscription  to  the  Red  Cross,  but  turned 
down  the  callers  flat.  He  said  he  had  never  sworn  obedience 
to  the  United  States  and  never  would,  adding:  ''  They  can 
take  me  back  to  Germany  or  any  place  they  like,  and  I  don't 
care  a  damn  how  quick."  Such  a  man,  it  would  seem, 
ought  to  be  obliged  in  the  matter  of  such  preferences.     A 

preacher,  Uev.  E ,  seemed  to  talk  German  propaganda 

rather  than  the  Hoty  Scriptures.  He  was  indicted.  August 
Y made  seditious  remarks  in  the  open,  and  was  re- 
ported to  the  Department  of  Justice.     Henry  B was 

reported  for  threats  he  made  against  his  neighbor  for  tak- 
ing part  in  the  War  Work  campaign.  Several  alien  enemies 
who  were  applying  for  citizenship  were  held  while  their  rec- 
ords were  looked  up.     Joe  M believed  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 

to  be  a  ''graft,"  and  thought  our  boys  were  sent  to  France 


406  THE  WEB 

to  be  butchered.  Duly  interviewed  about  it.     0.  W.  S , 

cashier  of  a  bank,  wrote  a  letter  in  which  he  stated  his  bank 
would  not  take  any  Government  certificates.  He  gave  as  his 
reason  that  he  was  short  of  help,  as  one  of  his  men  was  being 
held  in  the  army  against  his  will  and  ' '  against  the  wishes  of 
the  community. ' '     He  was  spoken  to. 

Neillsville,  Wisconsin,  apparently,  was  up  on  its  toes.  It 
reports  the  investigation  of  an  alien  German  Lutheran  min- 
ister ;  utterances  against  the  President  and  the  Government, 
and  the  discovery  of  socialistic  campaign  literature  for  evi- 
dence in  the  Socialist  trial  at  Chicago.  It  searched  the  com- 
munity for  the  Socialist  paper  called  "  The  Voice  of  the 
People  ";  investigated  the  Russellite  sect  and  looked  up 
the  record  of  118  petitioners  for  naturalization ;  investigated 
juries  in  the  trial  of  a  murder  case  growing  out  of  an  attempt 
to  evade  the  draft,  in  which  several  people  were  wounded 
and  two  killed,  and  investigated  a  Socialist  candidate  for 
sheriff  who  made  contributions  to  a  fund  for  printing  radical 
literature.  The  foregoing  civil  activities  were  done  in  the 
interest  of  the  Department  of  Justice.  Neillsville,  for  the 
War  Department,  investigated  a  woman  who  was  trjdng  to 
get  information  about  the  Edgewood  Arsenals;  assisted  the 
U.  S.  Marshals  in  arresting  draft  dodgers,  and  investigated 
civilian  applicants  for  overseas  service  and  applicants  for 
commissions.  The  Chief  apologizes  for  not  having  done 
more! 

Oshkosh,  Wisconsin,  had  one  hundred  and  eleven  men  — 
lawyers,  doctors,  bankers,  manufacturers  and  workmen  — 
on  her  A.  P.  L.  rolls.  The  investigations  throughout  the 
war  period  totalled  343.  There  was  much  outspoken  Ger- 
manism in  this  district  before  the  United  States  went  into 
the  war,  but  after  that,  it  died  down.  One  old  German, 
when  confronted  by  the  operatives,  said:  "  Vel,  I  dell  you 
vat  I  dink ;  it  is  so ;  I  dink  vat  I  dink.  How  can  I  helb  id  ? 
But  I  say  not  von  dam  vord  —  nef er !  "  A  safe  rule.  ' '  Since 
the  Avar  ended,"  says  the  Chief,  "  known  sympathizers  with 
Germany  have  been  as  quiet  as  oysters  here.  When  Germany 
has  been  a  republic  for  twenty  years  or  so,  I  hope  some  of 
these  imported  old  bigots  will  soften." 

Racine,  Wisconsin,  has  a  population  of  50,000.  In  a 
slacker  raid  it  gathered  in  3,000,  including  a  number  of  real 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  407 

dodgers  and  deserters.  Two  companies  of  State  guards  and 
Spanish  %Yar  veterans,  organized  into  thirty-five  squads,  car- 
ried out  the  League's  orders  to  perfection. 

Berlin,  Wisconsin,  reports :  ' '  Berger  carried  this  county 
for  Congress.  We  had  some  German  propagandists  who  said 
that  America  could  not  win  the  war.  We  quieted  them. 
Most  of  our  work  had  to  do  with  Liberty  Bond  campaigns, 
Ked  Cross,  exemption  claims,  and  Food  Administration  mat- 
ters." 

Eau  Claire,  Wisconsin,  makes  a  clean-cut  report  on  the 
acti\aties  of  that  division,  being  in  touch  constantly  with 
the  Agents  of  the  Department  of  Justice  and  ready  to  act 
at  once  at  all  times.  D.  J.  complimented  this  division  on 
its  compilation  of  evidence.  The  Chief  says :  ' '  Among  our 
cases  are  several  which  proved  vexatious.  We  succeeded  in 
silencing  such  disloyalists  as  we  had.  Notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  the  war  is  over,  we  know  there  yet  lies  ahead  of 
all  good  citizens  an  enormous  work  of  education  in  righting 
and  keeping  right  the  obligation  of  the  individual  to  the 
Government. ' ' 

MINNESOTA 

The  City  of  Duluth,  at  the  head  of  the  Great  Lakes,  lies 
close  to  the  edge  of  the  great  Northern  wilderness  whose 
fastnesses  might  well  beckon  the  evader  as  well  as  the 
explorer  or  the  discoverer.  Her  geographical  situation 
makes  Duluth  a  sort  of  Mecca  for  dodgers,  drifters  and  de- 
serters, and  a  good  part  of  the  A.  P.  L.  work  at  that  point  — 
and  hard  work  it  often  was  —  consisted  in  running  down 
these  unwilling  patriots  who  preferred  the  seclusiveness  of 
a  logging  camp,  trapper's  shack,  or  even  a  logging  drive,  to 
bearing  arms  under  their  country's  flag. 

Olsen  is  a  name  somewhat  indefinite  in  the  upper  Minne- 
sota country,  but  it  was  claimed  by  a  deserter  from  Camp 
Dodge  who  originally  registered  from  Ely,  Minnesota.  The 
entire  Olsen  genealogical  tree  was  combed  over,  and  many 
shacks  housing  OLsens  here  and  there  in  the  woods  were 
examined,  but  the  right  Olsen  was  not  found.  At  last  an 
operative  hit  upon  the  expedient  of  spreading  word  that 
this  particular  Olsen  was  wanted  to  sign  a  receipt  for  some 


408  THE  WEB 

property  that  had  been  left  to  him.  The  proper  Olsen  came 
into  town,  was  arrested  at  once,  and  sent  to  Fort  Snelling  — 
the  victim  of  several  kinds  of  misplaced  confidence. 

There  came  into  Duluth  a  rather  pitiful  story  of  a  young 
girl  of  East  Texas  engaged  to  a  U.  S.  soldier  who  was  taken 
prisoner  and  sent  to  the  interior  of  Germany.  The  prisoner 
sent  out  a  letter  to  his  sweetheart  which  stated  that  he  was 
well  treated.  He  also  said  that  he  was  sending  her  his 
watch  as  a  souvenir,  lest  she  might  never  see  him  again. 
The  girl  took  the  watch  to  a  jeweler.  Inside  of  the  works 
there  w^as  a  note  which  said  that  everything  the  prisoner 
had  written  in  the  letter  was  not  true,  that  his  nose  and 
ears  had  been  cut  off  by  the  Germans,  so  that  he  felt  him- 
self unfit  even  to  be  seen  by  her  again.  The  girl  herself 
lived  at  Nacogdoches  and  had  met  her  Northern  sweetheart 
in  a  Southern  camp. 

From   Ashland,    Wisconsin,    there    was    reported   to    the 

Duluth  office  the  name  of  one  J ,  a  deserter.     He  was 

traced  out  into  the  woods,  found  in  the  garret  of  a  shack 
whose  owner  disclaimed  all  knowledge  of  him,  hauled  down 
and  out  and  sent  to  Fort  Snelling,  all  in  jig  time. 

From  Erie,  Pennsylvania,  there  came  to  Duluth  warning 
that  there  probably  would  be  on  a  steamer  due  to  land  at 
that  point  a  deserter  from  the  service.  The  boat  was  met, 
the  deserter  was  found,  and  within  thirty-six  hours  he  was 
on  his  way  to  Fort  Snelling  to  repent  at  his  leisure. 

One  0 ,  an  Austrian  or  Russian,  a  mill  hand,  was 

found  in  bed  when  an  operative  went  after  him  as  a  draft 
evader.  He  was  so  indiscreet  as  to  say,  "  To  hell  with 
America."     At  that  time  the  operative  landed  on  him  with 

a  stiff  right,  and  0 went  down  for  the  count.     The 

short  and  simple  annals  of  Mr.  0 's  case  read:     "  He 

was  dragged  to  jail  with  his  toes  up,  put  in  a  cell  with  his 
toes  still  up,  and  left  alone  with  his  toes  up.  The  next  day 
he  was  sent  to  Fort  Snelling  as  a  deserter." 

All  the  way  from  Great  Falls,  Montana,  came  a  deserter 
who  thought  he  could  hide  himself  in  the  North  woods 
around  Duluth.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  succeeded  in  doing 
so  for  more  than  a  month  although  he  was  traced  here  and 
there  in  the  forest.  He  located  on  a  river-drive  where  he 
worked  for  a  time.     This  Mr.  C alwavs  went  armed 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  409 

and  was  reported  as  dangerous,  but  this  did  not  act  as  any 
deterrent  for  A.  P.  L.  men.  The  evader  was  classified  as 
having  strong  I.  W.  W.  affiliations.  He  was  chased  far  in 
the  woods,  but  will  have  to  come  out  some  time.  When  he 
does,  he  will  find  the  Duluth  A.  P.  L.  ready  to  welcome  him. 

The  totals  for  Duluth  might  be  expected  to  run  high. 
Accordingly  we  need  not  be  surprised  to  find  that  Duluth 
reports  1,293  investigations  of  disloyalty  and  sedition ;  3,287 
men  taken  in  slacker  raids;  41  investigations  for  propa- 
ganda, and  186  naturalization  investigations. 

Freeborn  County,  Minnesota,  submitted  a  very  optimistic 
report:  *'  The  loyal  folks  were  so  plentiful  that  if  any 
pessimist  happened  to  say  the  wrong  thing  about  the  Red 
Cross  or  the  Liberty  Loans,  he  was  promptly  reported.  A 
few  fines  of  $500  each  in  the  district  court  soon  stopped  all 
disloyalty  talk.  The  Non-Partisan  League  was  watched 
closely  but  we  got  nothing  disloyal  at  their  meetings  and 
could  find  no  openly  disloyal  acts.  They  have  an  unusual 
proportion  of  persons  of  German  extraction  in  their  mem- 
bership. At  the  beginning  of  the  war  a  good  many  farmers 
tried  to  keep  their  sons  at  home,  often  using  strongly  col- 
ored affidavits.  Some  honestly  felt  that  the  duty  to  furnish 
food  was  greater  than  the  duty  to  fight,  which  attitude 
sometimes  led  to  unfounded  accusations  against  them." 

Wilkin  County,  Minnesota,  watched  Non-Partisan  League 
activities  closely.  Members  of  this  none  too  loyal  organiza- 
tion talked  less  freely  when  they  learned  that  they  were 
being  watched.  The  community  had  some  clergymen  with 
strong  German  tendencies,  but  these  also  experienced  a 
change  of  heart.  One  German  alien,  registered  at  Omaha, 
Nebraska,  who  had  left  without  permission,  was  arrested 
until  the  Department  of  Justice  at  St.  Paul  could  take  him 
over.  The  fact  of  his  arrest  created  a  large  silence  among 
the  pro-Germans  of  the  region. 

Grant  County,  Minnesota,  has  a  little  report.  *'  A  few 
minor  investigations  of  false  statements  about  deferred 
classifications  were  made.  We  got  the  facts.  Our  County 
is  small,  no  large  settlements,  and  every^one  knows  practically 
everybody  else,  so  there  was  little  for  us  to  do." 

Winona,  Minnesota,  sends  in  the  best  kind  of  a  report  — 
with  few  or  no  figures  under  most  lettered  heads.     Winona 


410  THE  WEB 

has  about  20,000  inhabitants,  and  is  a  small  farming  com- 
munity with  a  floating  population.  Much  of  the  work  of 
the  division  was  in  stopping  local  gossip  and  loose  talking. 
The  League  did,  however,  locate  one  deserter,  who  was  duly- 
turned  over. 

MISSOURI 

The  tracing  of  a  deserter  may  take  a  hundred  pages  in  a 
file.  A  certain  man  registered  in  St.  Louis,  but  never  turned 
in  his  questionnaire.  He  was  classified  by  the  Adjutant 
General  of  Missouri  as  a  deserter,  and  A.  P.  L.  was  re- 
quested to  find  him.  Search  revealed  him  in  James  City, 
Pennsylvania.  The  chief  of  police  of  a  nearby  town  found 
the  man  in  bed.  The  deserter,  whose  name  may  be  called 
Bates,  resisted  fiercely.  It  was  stated  of  him  that  he  was 
the  first  man  the  chief  of  police  ever  arrested  who  succeeded 
in  breaking  a  pair  of  handcuffs.  He  fought  all  the  time  until 
he  was  put  in  jail.  Mr.  Bates,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  fought 
equally  well  in  the  army.  He  certainly  got  his  chance  to 
do  so. 

D.  W.  B ,  from  St.  Louis,  was  once  in  the  108th 

Infantry,  but  vanished  therefrom,  leaving  his  uniform  in 
New  York  with  a  friend.     One  paragraph,  the  last  page  in 

the  file,  will  cover  the  case  of  Mr.  B :     "  As  subject 

was  apprehended  in  Buffalo,  the  commanding  officer  at 
Fort  Niagara  was  communicated  with,  and  he  detailed  a 
sergeant  to  come  to  Buffalo  on  December  17.  The  sergeant 
took  B into  custody  and  conveyed  him  to  Fort  Niag- 
ara, where  he  is  at  present." 

Kansas  City,  among  other  cases,  turned  in  a  love  letter 
written  by  a  local  young  lady  to  a  Japanese,  Heroshirmo,  at 
present  living  in  Japan.  The  letter  begins :  * '  Dear  Hero- 
shirmo:  How  I  want  to  write  to  you  pages  and  pages  of 
something,  I  am  not  sure  what.  I  want  to  tell  you  first 
about  the  beautiful  summer  that  has  just  passed,  how  beau- 
tiful the  trees  and  flowers  were,  how  infinite  and  blue  the 
sky  ' ' —  but  perhaps  that  will  be  enough. 

The  A.  P.  L.  noticed  the  post-mark  and  thought  that  this 
sort  of  correspondence  ought  to  be  looked  into.  It  should. 
The  Japanese  had  once  stopped  in  Kansas  City  as  a  member 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  411 

of  a  Commission  on  its  way  to  Washington,  and  had  visited 
local  friends.  No  international  plot  was  unveiled  in  this 
case.  Just  the  trees  and  flowers  were  discovered  to  be  beau- 
tiful and  the  sky  very  blue.  To  be  sure,  the  writer  being 
a  woman,  the  letter  had  a  postscript:  "  Just  because  I  have 
been  sick,  would  you  like  to  send  me  a  genuine  Japanese 
kimona?  I  must  tell  you  that  all  of  the  first  page  of  your 
last  letter  except  the  first  few  lines  were  cut  out  by  the  cen- 
sor.    D n  the  war. ' ' 

Jefferson  City,  Missouri,  has  jurisdiction  over  several 
counties  but  the  division  consisted  of  only  twenty-one  mem- 
bers. These  men  were  of  great  value  to  the  Department 
of  Justice  at  Kansas  City.  The  sparsely  settled  nature  of 
the  country  around  Jeft'erson  City  meant  a  great  deal  of 
automobile  travel.  The  Chief  says  he  has  traveled  as  high 
as  ninety-five  miles  in  his  own  car  on  one  case.  This  meant 
a  vast  amount  of  work  for  the  small  membership  of  the 
League  at  that  point.     It  acquitted  itself  admirably. 

Clinton,  Missouri,  faithfully  performed  a  large  volume  of 
routine  work  such  as  comes  to  most  of  the  divisions  —  some 
three  hundred  cases  in  all,  under  various  headings.  The 
Chief  concludes:  ''  Our  activities  have  been  abundant. 
We  mean  to  continue  our  organization  here  until  there  is 
no  further  need  for  it.  Our  personnel  is  made  up  of  the 
best  men  in  this  county.  Our  system  of  warning  by  red- 
whit  e-and-blue  cards  has  been  adopted  in  many  States  and 
by  the  National  Council  of  Defense." 

Monett,  Missouri,  had  some  trouble  from  the  fact  that 
drafted  men  were  at  first  able  to  obtain  alcoholic  beverages 
there.  This  was  stopped  by  the  local  League.  There  was 
considerable  propaganda  by  word  of  mouth  in  this  locality 
which  was  choked  off.  One  deserter  defied  all  local  officers 
to  capture  him  and  take  him  back  to  camp.  Nevertheless 
he  was  taken,  returned  to  camp,  court-martialed  and  sen- 
tenced to  a  term  in  the  federal  prison.  As  a  whole,  the  peo- 
ple of  this  community  are  law  abiding  100-percent  Amer- 
icans.    Hence  the  League's  work  was  light. 

Fayette,  Missouri:  ''  Thirty  investigations  resulted  in  re- 
classifying twenty-five  men.  We  arrested  three  camp  de- 
serters and  two  men  for  disloyal  acts.  Found  three  men 
hoarding  sugar  and  made  them  take  it  back.     In  some  cases 


412  THE  WEB 

we  just  warned  parties  that  their  conduct  had  been  reported 
to  be  reprehensible,  and  evidence  was  produced  by  them  to 
prove  their  later  love  and  loyalty  to  the  United  States. ' ' 

IOWA 

Des  Moines,  Iowa,  the  very  prosperous  capital  of  the  pros- 
perous state  of  Iowa,  had  an  A.  P.  L.  man  attached  to  the 
Intelligence  Service  of  the  Army.  He  spoke  German  fluently 
and  in  order  to  investigate  conditions  inside  a  neighboring 
camp,  he  pretended  to  be  a  conscientious  objector,  thus  being 
confined  to  barracks  with  other  conscientous  objectors,  some 
real  and  some  camouflage.  A  picked  War  Department  Com- 
mittee, including  the  Governor  of  the  State,  was  combing 
out  these  objectors  and  ran  across  the  A.  P.  L.  man.  The 
latter  was  unable  to  explain,  and  had  to  go  through  as  a 
conscientious  objector  and  listen  to  a  good  lecture  to  boot! 

Des  ]\Ioines  had  another  case  of  a  fine  looking  young  man 
who  weighed  about  175  pounds  and  who  sported  a  clever  little 
military  mustache.  He  was  caught  in  a  slacker  drive  and 
on  the  following  morning  hesitatingly  handed  the  agent  a 
telegram  sent  by  his  father,  which  read :  "I  have  told  you 
that  damned  eye-brow  on  your  upper  lip  would  get  you 
into  trouble.  Tell  the  Government  I  say  you  are  only  twenty 
—  you  look  older,  but  act  younger.  If  you  wish  to  please 
your  father,  enlist  in  the  Navy. ' '     The  son  enlisted. 

Iowa  City,  Iowa,  is  a  university  town,  a  good,  peaceful 
and  thrifty  community  and  one  of  the  most  useful  in  the 
West.  The  foreign  element  in  that  district  has  been  rather 
Bohemian  than  German,  but  the  population  has  the  usual 
admixture.  There  are  two  precincts  populated  by  Mennon- 
ites,  whose  religion  is  work  and  not  war.  One  of  these  good 
folk  refused  to  buy  Liberty  Bonds  but  sold  enough  walnut 
logs  from  his  farm  to  make  several  thousand  gun  stocks. 
This  man  was  finally  persuaded  to  buy  as  many  dollars 
in  bonds  as  his  logs  made  gun  stocks.  Some  conscientious 
objectors  from  Camp  Dodge  were  sent  out  to  farm  among 
these  Mennonite  brothers  and  thus  escaped  the  draft,  whereas 
local  loyal  farmers '  sons  had  to  go  to  the  front.  This  created 
bitter  feeling.     ]\Iost  of  these  dodgers  were  recalled. 

Oskaloosa,  Iowa,  had  its  own  share  of  local  wrangles  over 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  413 

League  war  activities.  One  suspect  was  brought  up  under 
charges  of  disloyalty  by  reason  of  many  reports  coming  in 
against  him.  He  was  indicted  and  the  local  Chief  says: 
'*  I  have  no  doubt  of  his  conviction  had  he  not  died  since." 

Hardin  County,  Iowa,  had  an  organization  which  kept 
this  community  decent  and  orderly  and  up  to  the  front  in 
all  of  the  war  activities.  The  chief  was  a  member  of  the 
Bureau  of  Military  Affairs  for  Hardin  County,  which  had 
charge  of  all  the  war  work.  He  was  also  on  the  County 
Committee  of  Four  on  Military  Instruction,  whose  duty  it 
was  to  instruct  and  train  drafted  men.  Other  members  of 
the  A.  P.  L.  were  on  the  Legal  Advisory  Board  and  also 
were  of  assistance  to  the  drafted  men.  A  steady-going  and 
firm-stepping  community. 

Corning,  Iowa,  worked  in  the  usual  unostentatious  way 
with  the  Food  and  Fuel  administrations,  etc.  Two  indict- 
ments were  brought  against  a  man  who  blocked  war  activ- 
ities, the  fines  going  to  the  Red  Cross. 

Green  County  reports:  "  All  quiet  in  this  section.  Very 
few  Germans  in  our  county.  None  showed  disloyalty  ex- 
cept one  old  German  woman  who  wTote  to  her  son,  a  mis- 
sionary in  China.  Her  family  promised  to  keep  her  loyal. 
We  examined  into  the  German  Lutheran  schools  and  German 
language  assemblages.     Nothing  of  much  consequence." 

Decorah,  Iowa,  is  another  peaceful  community  in  a  peace- 
ful State.  Little  or  no  trouble  was  met  here.  "  The  A.  P. 
L.  was  organized  rather  late."  says  the  report,  '*  owing  to 
the  fact  that  we  had  a  most  thorough  and  efficient  Defense 
Council  at  work." 

Indianola,  Iowa,  is  also  a  place  of  peace.  The  League 
had  been  organized  only  a  short  time  when  the  Armistice 
broke,  and  there  were  but  few  acti\'ities.  "  Indianola  has 
a  rural  population,"  says  the  Chief,  '*  with  a  very  small 
percentage  of  foreign  born.  No  trouble  of  any  consequence. ' ' 

SOUTH  DAKOTA 

Aberdeen,  South  Dakota,  must  have  been  a  good  talking 
point  for  German  propagandists,  because  it  reports  122  cases 
of  propaganda  by  word  of  mouth,  and  128  cases  of  propa- 
ganda by  printed  matter.     The  division  was  called  on  to 


414  THE  WEB 

take  active  part  in  the  I.  W.  W.  labor  troubles,  and  this  part 
of  its  work  is  described  at  some  length  in  the  Chief's  re- 
port: 

Thousands  of  I.  W.  W.'s  drift  here  at  harvest  time.  Their 
jungles  sometimes  contain  as  many  as  one  thousand  men. 
They  take  charge  of  whole  trains,  and  force  railroads  to  carry 
them  wherever  they  wish.  They  have  forced  the  city  authori- 
ties in  small  communities  to  send  them  a  specified  amount  of 
food,  and  have  defied  the  authorities  of  larger  cities  to  con- 
trol them.  By  their  methods  of  sabotage,  murder  and  arson 
they  have  terrorized  certain  sections  of  this  state  and  de- 
stroyed millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  property.  In  the  summer 
of  1917  the  annual  influx  started.  The  A.  P.  L.  was  called 
on  for  assistance,  and  decidedly  effective  measures  were 
adopted.  Home  Guards  and  citizens  were  organized  —  later 
called  by  a  D.  J.  officer  "the  Klu  Klux  Klan  of  the  Prairies." 
Anyhow,  this  section  of  the  prairies  was  soon  clear.  In  con- 
sequence, a  strike  was  declared  by  the  Minneapolis  branch  of 
the  I.  W.  W.  and  some  of  their  gunmen  were  sent  out.  The 
property  of  the  Chief  of  Police  at  Aberdeen  was  burnt.  In 
less  than  two  weeks  four  of  these  men  were  under  arrest  and 
two  of  them  are  now  serving  sentences  in  the  Federal  Peniten- 
tiary at  Leavenworth.  The  methods  adopted  by  this  branch 
of  the  A.  P.  L.  have  proved  efficacious.  Thousands  of  dollars' 
worth  of  property  have  been  saved. 

As  Aberdeen  is  located  in  one  of  the  Non-Partisan  League 
districts,  and  as  reports  have  come  from  nearby  towns  de- 
noting a  large  percentage  of  pro-Germanism,  it  may  be  well 
to  quote  further  from  the  report  of  this  division.  The 
Chief  says  that  one  family  living  in  Hecla,  strongly  pro-Ger- 
man, declared  they  would  never  be  taken  alive.  The  A.  P.  L. 
took  over  the  case.  One  man  was  shot  resisting  arrest.  Five 
members  of  the  family  were  arrested  and  two  were  convicted, 
while  one  remains  to  be  tried.  **  This  stopped  pro-German 
utterances  in  that  community."  says  the  Chief,  "  and  mate- 
rially aided  in  the  sale  of  bonds. ' ' 

In  December,  1917,  Fred  H of  Aberdeen  was  in- 
terned for  pro-German  utterances.  His  wife  turned  state's 
evidence  on  members  of  the  local  German  club  where  mem- 
bers had  been  fined  for  speaking  the  English  language.  Four 
of  the  leading  spirits  of  this  club  were  taken  into  custody, 
one  of  them  the  publisher  of  three  German  language  news- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  415 

papers  of  wide  circulation  which  were  openly  pro-German. 
This  man  had  sent  to  von  Bernstorif  $10,000,  ostensibly  to 
be  used  for  the  German  Red  Cross  —  all  of  it  raised  from 
readers  of  his  publication  through  the  sale  of  the  ''  iron 
ring."  This  man  was  sentenced  and  fined  $500.  An  asso- 
ciate editor  of  the  same  string  of  papers  was  interned  also. 
One  of  the  parties  was  president  of  the  South  Dakota 
German-American  Alliance,  and  published  a  German  lan- 
guage paper  at  Sioux  Falls.  He  was  charged  with  w^riting 
a  letter  which  reads  as  follows : 

I  have  never  given  any  declaration  of  loyalty  and  never  will 
do  it,  nor  subscribe  to  any  Liberty  Loan.  The  name  is  to  me 
already  an  emetic  because  hypocritical  and  misleading.  That 
a  man  perhaps  buys  bonds  for  business  considerations,  I  can 
understand,  but  I  myself  couldn't  do  it  without  thinking  that 
my  $50  or  .SlOO  might  perhaps  buy  the  explosive  which  Ameri- 
can accomplices  of  the  allied  plunderbund  might  throw  on  the 
house  of  my  mother. 

The  writer  of  the  above,  as  head  of  the  German-American 
Alliance,  raffled  a  picture  of  the  crew  of  the  Deutsclilund 
after  our  declaration  of  war,  and  sold  souvenirs  from  the 
boat,  remitting  the  funds  to  New  York  German  centers.  He 
was  sentenced  to  ten  years  in  the  Federal  penitentiars*. 

The  active  Chief  of  Aberdeen  also  caught  H.  M.  H , 

a  former  lieutenant  in  the  German  Navy  and  an  ex-instructor 
in  the  Naval  School  at  Hamburg,  who  was  also  active  in 
the  German-American  Alliance.  He  got  five  years  in  the 
Federal  penitentiary  for  urging  young  men  of  draft  age  not 
to  enlist.  Another  alien  enemy  whose  papers  show  that  he 
once  had  wealthy  connections  in  Germany,  although  he  was 
engaged  in  making  a  scanty  living  at  baling  hay,  was  re- 
ported as  a  Prussian  and  believed  to  be  dangerous.     Yet 

another,  William  B .  was  picked  up  in  Aberdeen  and 

told  a  tale  that  sounded  like  one  by  Deadwood  Dick.  He 
said  he  lived  in  the  mountains  of  California  with  his  uncle, 
who  was  a  smuggler.  He  was  found  to  be  communicating 
with  the  I.  W.  W.,  and  was  sent  to  a  detention  camp.  An- 
other arrest  was  made,  of  Ed.  R ,  a  wealthy  farmer  who 

stated  he  would  rather  see  his  daughter  in  a  house  of  prostitu- 
tion than  a  member  of  the  Red  Cross.    He  was  sentenced  to 


416  THE  WEB 

five  years  in  the  penitentiary,  and  this  has  discouraged  the 
expression  of  such  sentiments  near  Aberdeen. 

Now,  if  there  were  nothing  else  whatever  printed  in  these 
pages,  the  foregoing  would  show  the  necessity  for  such  an 
organization  as  the  American  Protective  League,  even  in 
communities  far  away  from  manufacturing  centers  and  not 
supposed  to  be  governed  by  the  foreign  element.  The  report 
of  the  Chief  of  the  Aberdeen  Division  affords  grave  reading 
and  matter  for  grave  consideration.  In  that  one  little  com- 
munity, which  does  not  turn  in  memoranda  of  all  its  cases, 
there  were  312  Department  of  Justice  cases,  156  War  De- 
partment cases,  and  three  Navy  Department  cases.  Seven- 
teen persons  were  arrested  or  interned.  Perhaps  the  most 
noteworthy  of  the  recommendations  made  by  the  local  Chief 
is  this:  '*  It  has  been  the  experience  of  this  branch  that 
the  communities  reached  by  the  German  language  publica- 
tions have  been  decidedly  disloyal.  It  is  our  opinion  that 
action  should  be  urged  upon  Congress  to  discontinue  the 
foreign  language  press  in  America."  These  last  are  words 
of  gold.  They  ought  to  be  remembered  by  every  man  hold- 
ing office  in  the  United  States  and  by  every  man  seeking  the 
suffrages  of  real  American  citizens.  The  time  for  mincing 
matters  with  these  gentry  has  gone  by. 

NORTH  DAKOTA 

Fargo,  North  Dakota,  hands  in  a  report  which  varies  in 
one  important  particular  from  those  received  from  neigh- 
boring districts.  The  division  was  not  making  trouble  enough 
for  the  rampant  pro-Germans  in  Fargo,  so  the  League 
turned  around  and  investigated  some  of  its  ot\ti  officers. 
None  the  less,  the  report  tells  of  a  story  of  accomplishment, 
there  being  101  disloyalty  and  sedition  cases,  109  cases  under 
the  Selective  Service  Act,  and  eight  cases  of  enemy  sympa- 
thizers who  threatened  the  life  of  the  President. 

KANSAS 

It  will  be  no  surprise  to  those  who  know  Kansas  to  learn 
that  this  ultra-progressive,  prosperous,  energetic  State  was 
unswervingly  loyal  throughout  the  war,  and  had  few  cases 
of  any  kind  to  report.     A  few  sentences  quoted  from  the 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NORTH  417 

reports  of  several  representative  little  towns  will  serve  to 
show  the  Kansas  war  temperature  varied  from  normal  but 
slightly,  if  at  all. 

Oswego,  Kansas,  reports  succinctly :  ' '  One  hundred  per- 
cent patriotism  —  no  aliens." 

White  City,  Kansas,  says :  ' '  Ours  is  a  community  of  loyal 
citizens.  We  spoke  to  a  few  about  talking  too  much.  Nothing 
serious. ' ' 

Council  Grove,  Kansas,  proved  to  be  a  great  deal  quieter 
than  it  used  tabe  in  the  days  of  the  Santa  Fe  trail.  The 
Chief  says:  '*  We  had  a  few  pro- German  sympathizers 
whose  cases  we  turned  over  to  the  Department  of  Justice  to 
investigate. ' ' 

NEBRASKA 

The  A.  P.  L.  Division  at  Omaha,  Nebraska,  was  organized 
at  a  rather  late  date,  July  1,  1918.  The  Armistice  shattered 
the  activities  at  a  time  when  there  were  three  hundred  mem- 
bers of  the  League,  each  man  ready  to  do  what  was  asked 
of  him.  The  Omaha  Chief  reports  sixty  cases  of  disloyalty 
and  sedition,  and  several  thousand  investigations  made  in 
conjunction  with  D.  J.  as  a  result  of  the  slacker  raids,  as 
well  as  700  in  connection  with  the  Department  of  Labor. 

The  Chief  at  Hastings,  Nebraska,  says:  **  I  did  not  know 
the  work  would  be  so  extensive,  or  that  there  would  be  so 
much  to  do.  We  have  investigated  some  cases  for  Omaha, 
and  have  done  a  great  deal  of  work  on  draft  cases  for  the 
state  and  county  boards.  We  have  been  glad  to  do  this 
work,  and  I  am  thankful  that  I  could  help  my  country 
this  much." 

Callaway,  Nebraska,  has  a  grievance:  "  I  had  one  genu- 
ine case  of  seditious  utterance,  but  we  did  not  get  the  evi- 
dence. This  man  was  elected  State  Senator  by  the  Non- 
partisan League.  He  worked  against  the  Liberty  Bond 
drive.  Fortunately,  this  year  our  Senator  is  not  of  his 
sort  politically." 

David  City,  Nebraska,  reports  the  usual  routine  work. 
One  pro-German  was  taken  into  custody  for  making  sedi- 
tious remarks,  and  was  bound  over  to  the  grand  jury  for 
trial.  The  local  Chief  reports  that  his  organization  is  being 
held  intact  against  any  future  emergency. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH 

The  South  is,  in  its  percentage  as  to  population,  the 
finest,  cleanest,  truest  and  most  loyal  part  of  the  United 
States  to-day.  It  holds  more  of  the  native  born  Americans, 
fewer  of  the  foreign  born,  and  fewer  alien  enemies  than  any 
like  extent  of  our  National  possessions.  The  only  pure-bred 
American  population,  sufficiently  so  to  entitle  it  to  a  distinct 
origin-color  of  its  own  on  the  government  census  maps,  lies 
along  the  crest  of  the  southern  Appalachians.  There,  in 
parts  of  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  North  Carolina,  Georgia, 
Alabama,  lower  Virginia,  there  are  Americans  who  for 
generations  have  known  no  admixture  of  any  foreign  blood. 
You  will  find  illiteracy  there,  poverty,  small  industrial 
development.  That  has  come  about  by  reason  of  a  topog- 
raphy which  has  left  transportation  undeveloped.  The  peo- 
ple have  been  held  back  from  the  westbound  progress  of 
the  nation  almost  as  though  caught  by  the  cleats  of  the 
great  flume  through  which  poured  our  early  Scotch-Irish,  In- 
dian-fighting, wdlderness-conquering  ancestry.  But  it  is  the 
finest  of  gold  that  those  cleats  have  caught — a  clean-bred, 
persistent  type,  of  the  highest  honor,  the  highest  courage, 
the  highest  intellectual  quality,  the  highest  physical  quali- 
ties. Here  and  here  alone  you  will  find  a  true  American 
type,  come  down  with  little  change  from  our  Colonial  days. 
Would  God  that  every  state  in  the  North  and  West  had 
these  men  as  the  real  inheritors  of  America,  and  not  the 
snarling  mob  of  foreigners  who  in  the  last  few  decades  have 
come  to  be  called  American  citizens.  We  have  seen  in  some 
part  how  loyal  these  last  have  been,  how  much  they  cared 
for  the  flag  of  America. 

The  stock  of  our  Highlands  has  furnished  us  many  strong 
men,  many  of  our  greatest  leaders,  our  greatest  statesmen. 
Above  all,  it  is  fierce  fighting  stock.  It  has  been  held  back 
by  lack  of  education.     These  stark  mountaineers  are  far 

418 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  4I9 

more  illiterate  than  were  their  grand-parents.  To-day, 
in  a  Cumberland  cabin,  you  may  find  a  Latin  gram- 
mar, or  a  tragedy  in  the  original  Greek,  of  which  the  owner 
will  say,  "I  kaint  read  none  of  hit.  Grandpap  fotched  it 
across  the  mountings  when  he  come."  "Across  the  moun- 
tains ' '  lay  the  Carolinas  and  Old  Virginia,  seats  of  the  most 
cultured  and  aristocratic  life  this  country  ever  knew,  and 
equal  to  the  best  of  any  land.  When  we  lost  t^at,  we  lost 
the  flower  of  the  American  civilization.  We  never  shall  re- 
place it.  There  is  no  America  to-day.  There  never  can  be, 
unless  the  seed  of  the  old  American  stock  —  never  lacking 
in  leaders  —  one  day  shall  raise  its  voice  as  of  old  in  coun- 
cils where  it  will  find  hearkening. 

The  South  is  a  wide  country,  covering  a  certain  diversity 
of  nature,  but  it  remains  singularly  like  throughout  its  bor- 
ders. Politically  it  is  still  the  slave  of  the  color  question, 
whose  end  no  man  can  see.  That  same  question  restricts 
the  South  largely  to  agriculture.  Of  late,  Northern  money 
and  methods  have  been  reaching  out  for  the  raw  wealth  of 
Southern  mines  and  forests,  even  farming  lands.  It  is  in 
respect  of  these  later  slight  changes  in  the  character  of  the 
southern  life  that  the  A.  P.  L.  has  found  its  main  function 
there.  Had  it  not  been  for  imported  labor,  the  A.  P.  L. 
would  have  had  no  alien  and  seditious  cases,  no  propaganda 
and  no  disloyalty  to  report,  because  it  is  absolutely  true 
that  our  Southern  States,  which  once  thought  themselves 
constitutionally  justified  in  secession,  to-day  are  more  loyal 
to  the  American  flag  man  for  man,  town  for  town,  state  for 
state,  than  any  or  all  the  remaining  states  in  this  Union. 

This  is  true ;  and  yet  it  is  also  altogether  true  that  a  few 
Southern  States  furnished  more  cases  of  desertion  or  draft 
evasion  than  thrice  that  number  of  states  in  any  other  por- 
tion of  the  Union,  even  though  with  heavy  foreign-bom 
population.     How  can  these  two  statements  be  reconciled  1 

It  is  easy,  and  the  level-headed  A.  P.  L.  chiefs  time  and 
again  have  made  it  plain  in  their  reports.  A  large  percent 
of  the  selective  service  work  had  to  do  with  brave  young 
fighting  men  to  whom  liberty  and  personal  freedom  made 
the  breath  of  their  nostrils.  Many  of  them  were  ignorant 
— more  is  the  pity.  While  we  have  coddled  the  treacherous 
European  immigrant,  we  have  forgotten  our  own  children. 


420  THE  WEB 

Better  had  we  thrown  the  maudlin  Statue  of  Liberty  into 
the  sea,  or  turned  its  face  about  the  other  way ! 

The  young  Southerner  who  could  not  read  grandpap's 
Latin  book,  or  any  other  book,  who  saw  no  daily  paper  and 
knew  nothing  of  the  outside  world,  knew  only  that  he  did 
not  want  to  fight  in  a  war  of  which  he  knew  nothing  and 
in  which  he  did  not  think  he  or  his  had  any  stake.  Nobody 
had  threatened  him,  no  men  had  stolen  anything  of  his,  he 
did  not  know  where  Germany  was,  and  he  had  never  seen 
a  German  to  learn  to  hate  him.  Why  should  he  fight  ?  He 
concluded  he  would  not  fight.  He  would  just  hide  till  this 
war  was  over,  because  it  was  none  of  his  war. 

Very  much  of  the  A.  P.  L.  work  in  the  South  had  to  do 
with  getting  into  the  young  man's  comprehension  that  our 
Flag  was  in  danger ;  that  our  women  and  children  had  been 
killed  by  men  that  did  not  fight  like  men  but  like  brutes. 
Once  that  got  into  the  mountain  man's  mind,  the  day  for 
desertion  was  past  and  gone.  There  are  no  braver  or  more 
skilled  fighting  men  in  the  world  than  in  these  Southern 
hills.  There  are  none  more  loyal.  They  did  their  part  and 
were  ready  to  do  it  wherever  called.  They  helped  win  the 
war  for  America  as  well  as  those  from  richer  states.  Now 
that  the  war  is  over,  let  America  forget  Europe's  sordid 
sycophants,  the  grinning  reservists  of  the  ** unbeaten"  Ger- 
man Army,  and  turn  attention  to  these,  her  own  children 
—  no  cuckoo  product  without  an  ancestry  to  claim,  who  have 
no  love  for  this  country  beyond  their  love  for  this  country's 
easy  money. 

MARYLAND 

Largely  Southern  in  its  population,  traditions  and  political 
sympathies,  yet  Northern  in  its  aggressive  spirit  and  indus- 
trial enterprise,  the  city  of  Baltimore  perhaps  is  entitled  to 
be  called  *' American"  more  than  any  other  big  city  on  the 
Atlantic  seaboard.  It  has  always  been  American,  and  in 
this  war  has  only  proven  anew  what  has  always  been  known 
by  those  who  knew  Baltimore.  A  hundred  years  or  so  ago, 
in  the  War  of  1812,  its  citizens  fought  and  fell  gloriously 
in  defense  of  their  city  before  the  British.  A  beautiful 
monument  commemorates  their  heroism.    In  this  war,  there 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  421 

was  no  city  in  the  country  more  loyal  to  our  Government  and 
our  Allies. 

Let  it  not  be  thought,  however,  that  the  enemy  was  inactive 
in  Baltimore.  Trouble,  active  and  potential,  was  present 
at  all  times.  That  it  did  not  flare  up  into  open  destruction 
was  no  fault  of  the  trouble-makers.  Like  all  ports  of  entry, 
Baltimore  has  a  considerable  foreign  element.  Thousands 
of  foreigners  were  employed  in  its  shipbuilding  plants,  on 
its  docks,  and  in  the  Bessemer  steel  works  located  near  the 
city.  Of  pro-Germans  and  alien  enemies  there  was  a  plenty. 
Many  of  them,  indeed,  remembering  the  landing  of  the 
Deutscliland  at  Baltimore  before  the  war,  would  have  wel- 
comed and  aided  a  wholesale  submarine  raid  by  the  enemy — 
were  this  possible. 

However,  this  did  not  come  to  pass,  nor  did  many  other 
things  come  to  pass  that  were  justifiably  feared.  The  pro- 
German,  the  alien  enemy,  the  agitator,  the  Bolshe\4st  were 
held  safe  at  all  times.  Baltimore's  many  industries  were 
guarded  well.  Happily,  that  industry  which  has  given  her 
world-wide  fame — the  oyster  industry — required  no  protec- 
tion, and  it  is  a  pleasure  to  record  that  the  nation's  supply 
of  sea-food  was  uninterrupted  during  the  war. 

A  prolific  source  of  trouble  for  the  Baltimore  Division  lay 
in  the  city's  proximity  to  the  national  capital.  The  over- 
crowded condition  of  Washington  during  the  war  forced  a 
huge  overflow  of  population  into  Baltimore,  and  thus  doubled 
the  amount  of  work  that  otherwise  would  probably  have 
been  required.  This  work  was  tackled  with  energy  and 
efficiency  by  the  Baltimore  Division,  which  was  one  of  the 
very  largest  for  a  city  of  its  size  in  the  country.  When  the 
Armistice  came,  there  were  2,500  operatives  engaged  in  the 
multifold  activities  of  the  League.  The  following  report  does 
not  begin  to  tell  the  full  story  of  their  achievement : 

Alien  enemy  cases 110 

Sedition  and  disloyalty 685 

Character  and  loyalty 309 

Draft    evasion 546 

Deserters    225 

Liquor  and  vice 100 

Food  Administration  3 

Miscellaneous    110 


422  THE  WEB 

Baltimore  Division  organized  and  was  on  the  job  during 
the  very  first  month  of  the  war.  Its  first  Chief  was  Mr. 
Edmund  Leigh,  who  solved  the  many  knotty  problems  of 
organization  and  finance  which  arose  in  the  early  stages  of 
the  League's  growth.  Mr.  Leigh  was  succeeded  by  Mr.  Wil- 
liam J.  Neale  in  August,  1918,  who  acted  as  head  of  the 
division  until  November,  1918,  when  Mr.  Tilghman  G.  Pitts 
became  Chief. 


VIRGINIA 

Norfolk,  Virginia,  was  fortunate  in  having  as  its  chief  a 
gentleman  very  prominent  in  all  the  war  charities,  and  also 
of  such  generosity  of  nature  that  he  paid  all  the  expenses 
of  the  League  out  of  his  own  pocket. 

Conditions  might  have  been  much  worse  at  this  seaport 
locality,  for  only  eight  cases  of  alien  enemy  activity  are 
listed,  and  five  cases  of  disloyalty  and  sedition.  This  divi- 
sion, however,  was  able  to  do  a  great  deal  of  work  for  the 
War  Department,  and  among  other  matters  found  one  illicit 
still  and  made  four  I.  W.  W.  investigations.  Another  phase 
of  the  work  was  supplying  the  M.  I.  D.  officer  at  the  Army 
Supply  Base  —  Quartermaster 's  Terminal  —  near  Norfolk, 
with  many  photographs  of  alien  enemies  and  slackers.  The 
Division  had  operatives  in  Army  and  Navy  headquarters, 
among  workmen,  etc.,  and  had  such  men  included  in  its 
personnel  as  bookkeepers,  timekeepers  and  others  whose  work 
was  much  appreciated  by  Military  Intelligence.  The  chief 
had  twenty-one  assistants,  all  good  men. 

White  Sulphur  Springs,  Virginia,  had  one  typical  pro- 
German  case.     Adolph  S ,  a  baker  of  this  town,  held 

certain  opinions  which  would  not  strictly  classify  as  Ameri- 
can. When  asked  to  purchase  War  Savings  Stamps,  he  ex- 
pressed himself  as  follows :  ' '  To  hell  with  your  War  Savings 
Stamps.  If  Uncle  Sam  didn't  have  money  enough  to  finance 
the  war.  why  did  he  go  into  it  ?  When  the  American  soldiers 
get  to  France,  you'll  find  they  won't  do  anything  but  run 
like  hell." 

He  said  a  great  deal  more  in  similar  vein,  which  '*was 
hardly  suitable,"  says  the  Chief's  report,  *'for  polite  ears." 
In  the  IT.  S.  District  Court,  at  Charleston,  S confessed 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  423 

to  a  violation  of  the  Espionage  Act,  was  fined  $100  and  sen- 
tenced to  two  years  in  the  penitentiary. 

Lynchburg,  Virginia,  reports  that  it  was  rather  quiet. 
One  thing  it  did  was  to  draw  the  fangs  of  an  organization 
which  was  formed  to  punish  such  pro-Germans  and  war 
obstructionists  as  the  law  did  not  touch.  The  A.  P.  L.  has 
always  done  its  work  hand  in  hand  with  the  law,  and 
throughout  the  war  has  resolutely  set  its  face  against  any- 
thing savoring  of  lynch  law. 

Considerable  local  trouble  arose  from  returned  negro  sol- 
diers, discharged  from  service,  who  stated  that  they  had 
saved  the  world  from  Hun  oppression  and  were  entitled  to 
recognition.  These  statements  had  effect  on  the  ignorant 
population,  and  it  is  firmly  believed  by  the  Chief  that  the 
''South  has  a  problem  on  its  hands  in  this  connection  which 
will  require  considerable  time,  effort  and  patience,  if  not 
bloodshed,  to  solve."  Any  one  acquainted  in  the  least  de- 
gree with  the  great  problem  of  the  South  will  realize  the 
gravity  and  sincerity  of  this  comment. 

WEST  VIRGINIA 

There  were  ''hot  times  in  the  old  town"  of  Hinton,  West 
Virginia,  in  good  part  by  reason  of  the  activities  of  one  man, 
the  local  Chief,  who,  for  some  time  was  cook,  captain  and 
mate  of  the  Nancy  brig.  Local  disloyalty  induced  him  to 
go  to  Washington  and  ask  government  help,  and  the  League 
organization  followed.  One  pro-German  in  Hinton  had  the 
Kaiser's  picture  on  the  wall.  It  is  not  there  now.  The 
head  of  this  family  was  a  locomotive  engineer.  The  Chief 
notified  railroad  officials  not  to  allow  him  to  handle  any 
troop  trains.  Another  engineer  expressed  the  belief  that  a 
troop  train  was  carrying  "some  more  fish  bait."  He  was 
also  relieved  of  any  future  work  on  troop  trains.  Two 
school  teachers,  after  talking  with  the  Chief,  hung  up  four 
United  States  flags  and  began  to  sing  all  the  latest  war 
songs  as  well  as  take  an  active  part  in  Loan  drives.  Red 
Cross  w^ork,  etc.  The  largest  hotel  in  the  town  did  not  speak 
well  of  the  war,  and  the  Chief  notified  the  officers  in  charge 
of  troop  trains  to  get  their  meals  somewhere  else.  A  local 
newspaper  printed  an  article  refiecting  on  the  Red  Cross 


424  THE  WEB 

canteen.  ''I  had  all  the  papers  publish  an  article  over  my 
signature,"  says  the  Chief,  "  that  any  criticism  of  the  Red 
Cross  should  be  addressed  to  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  at 
Washington.  For  this  I  have  been  commended  by  the  Red 
Cross  membership."  It  appears  that  he  ought  to  be  com- 
mended for  his  own  record,  which,  on  the  face  of  it,  is  in  the 
blue-ribbon  class. 


NORTH  CAROLINA 

Lexington,  N.  C,  is  in  the  southern  mountains.  The  Chief 
says :  **  Owing  to  the  peculiar  reaction  of  the  mountaineer's 
philosophy  to  the  draft  laws,  many  of  them  '  stepped  back  ' 
into  the  '  brush  '  to  wait  until  the  war  was  over.  We  spent 
much  time  in  traveling  around  among  the  lumber  jacks  and 
sent  out  word  to  many  delinquents.  It  was  a  simple  thing 
to  reach  most  of  these  men  through  the  medium  of  some 
trusted  friend  —  much  simpler  than  sending  armed  men  into 
the  laurel  thickets  after  the  fugitives.  I  don 't  believe  there 
is  one  case  out  of  ten  in  western  North  Carolina  where  any 
of  our  men  avoided  the  draft  through  a  malicious  motive. 
Whenever  a  friendly  adviser  could  reach  them  to  explain 
the  situation,  the  majority  of  them  gladly  came  out.  We 
often  made  trips  of  from  thirty  to  fifty  miles  into  the 
isolated  sections.  At  one  point  thirty  miles  from  a  railroad 
we  got  information  which  was  sent  across  the  sea  to  France 
and  stopped  an  undesirable  appointee  to  Y.  M.  C.  A.  work 
there.  Some  humorous  things  came  up  in  our  mountain 
travels.  One  day  our  road  dwindled  to  an  almost  obliter- 
ated trail  with  grass  growing  all  over  it.  We  sighted  an 
old  woman,  the  first  human  being  seen  for  several  hours, 
and  asked  her  if  that  was  the  right  way  to  Doeville.  The 
old  woman  looked  at  us  with  great  contempt,  and  remarked : 
' '  Lord  bless  us,  you-all  is  right  in  Doeville  dis  minute !  ' ' 

The  Chief  of  Lexington  says  that  not  everyone  under- 
stands the  mountain  boys  and  that  they  certainly  make  ex- 
cellent fighters  when  in  the  army.  ''  One  of  them  in  my 
district,"  reports  the  Chief,  ''  had  to  be  run  down  and 
captured  by  his  own  father,  who  delivered  him  over  to  the 
authorities  for  military  service.  This  boy  was  the  first  of 
his  company  to  distinguish  himself  in  France. ' ' 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  425 

The  Chief  of  Salisbury,  North  Carolina,  Division  sends  in 
his  final  report  in  homely  and  convincing  phrases,  a  mark  of 
the  good  common  sense  employed  in  his  work.  One  pro- 
German  was  called  into  the  office  and  the  Chief  said  to  him : 

' '  Mr. ,  I  hear  that  the  next  time  you  and  your  family 

come  to  town  over  the  public  road,  you  are  going  to  be 
blown  up  without  any  warning. ' '  The  man  struck  the  table 
with  his  fist  and  said :  ''I'd  like  to  know  how !  The  public 
road  is  mine  and  I  'm  going  to  travel  on  it. ' '  The  Chief  said : 
"  So  our  ships  had  a  public  highway  to  Europe.  The  Ger- 
mans have  destroyed  vessels,  women  and  children  without 
warning.  What  do  you  think  of  it?  "  The  pro-German 
thought  this  over  a  minute  and  exclaimed:  "  Why  hasn't 
some- one  talked  to  me  like  that  before?  I  never  saw  it  that 
way  before." 

Hickory,  N.  C,  says:  "  Our  work  was  largely  educa- 
tional. We  had  no  aliens  —  all  native  born  American  citi- 
zens. Thirty  of  our  leading  citizens  constituted  the  member- 
ship of  the  League.  When  we  went  to  work,  all  the  '  agin- 
ners  '  who  were  against  the  war  got  on  the  right  side.  Espe- 
cially was  this  true  after  the  amended  espionage  act  went 
into  effect.  In  my  judgment,"  says  the  Chief,  *'  the  psycho- 
logical effect  of  an  organization  that  could  be  felt  but  not 
seen  helped  wonderfully  in  bringing  to  their  right  senses 
the  small  minority  that  were  not  in  right  at  the  start." 

Durham,  N.  C,  pulled  off  one  raid  on  a  circus  crowd  and 
got  ten  slackers.  "  Our  community  has  a  foreign  element," 
says  the  Chief,  "  and  is  above  the  average  in  respect  to  law 
and  order.  Our  members  were  prominent  in  the  war  ac- 
tivities. ' ' 


SOUTH  CAROLINA 

Anderson,  S.  C,  says:  ''  Our  organization  has  been 
anxious  to  answer  every  call.  There  are  practically  no 
foreigners  in  this  section,  so  violations  of  the  war  measures 
have  been  almost  negligible.  Most  of  our  work  has  been 
making  reports  for  overseas  service.  The  men  all  consider 
it  a  great  honor  to  have  been  members  of  the  League." 

A  man  whom  we  may  call  Benny  Vogel  deserted  from  the 
105th  Infantry  at  Camp  Wadsworth,  South  Carolina.     In 


426  THE  WEB 

some  way,  he  found  his  way  to  Schenectady,  New  York, 
where  he  proceeded  casually  to  marry  a  young  lady  of  that 
city,  under  date  of  April  19,  1918.  The  wife  was  watched. 
The  deserter  was  caught  and  returned  for  punishment. 

St.  Matthews,  S.  C,  reports:  *'  On  the  whole  there  was 
little  enemy  activity.  We  unearthed  six  cases  of  discharged 
soldiers  drawing  government  money  who  were  not  entitled 
to  it,  and  eight  cases  of  parties  receiving  allotments  from 
soldiers  for  incorrect  amounts.  We  changed  such  undesir- 
able sentiment  as  existed  in  our  community,  and  with  tact 
and  judgment  rather  than  by  drastic  measures.  We  think 
our  community  is  among  the  most  loyal  of  any  in  America 
and  doubt  seriously  if  there  is  one  per  cent  disloyalty  here. 
Some  who  at  first  were  lukewarm  changed,  and  we  knew 
it  was  due  to  the  policy  adopted  by  our  organization.  We 
worked  on  the  Sunday  law  and  the  fuel  laws,  the  food  regu- 
lations, etc.,  all  in  a  quiet  way,  but,  we  think,  with  good  re- 
sults throughout  our  county." 

GEORGIA 

All  sorts  of  stories  show  in  the  League  files.  One  regard- 
ing submarine  bases  along  the  Georgia  and  Carolina  coast 
was  traced  down  to  the  purchase  of  a  piece  of  land  by  a 
former  grocery  clerk,  a  naturalized  German,  who  resided  in 
Savannah  for  many  years.  He  was  outspoken  in  his  sym- 
pathy with  Germany  before  the  United  States  entered  the 
war.  A  report  made  by  the  Navy  Department  to  the  Na- 
tional Directors  of  the  League  states: 

On  January  6,  1918,  this  man  was  tried  in  the  city  court 
of  Savannah  and  found  guilty  of  violating  the  prohibition 
laws.  He  was  fined  $400  and  sentenced  to  six  months  on 
the  chain  gang.  Before  he  had  fully  served  his  sentence  he 
was  re-arrested  by  the  United  States  Marshal  on  a  presiden- 
tial warrant  and  subsequently  interned."  The  brief  phrase 
*'  presidential  warrant  "  covered  many  and  many  a  case  of 
naturalized  Germans  who  became  too  loquacious  in  this 
country  before  and  after  we  entered  the  war. 

Atlanta,  Georgia,  had  a  nice  scare  about  the  report  that  a 
German  IT-boat  captain  had  landed  and  was  on  his  way  to 
Atlanta,  dressed  in  an  American  officer's  uniform.     Opera- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  427 

tives  were  out  and  trailed  every  military  or  quasi-military 
looking  man  on  the  streets  or  anywhere  else.  Their  first 
haul  included  a  major  from  the  Judge  Advocate  General's 
office  and  a  Judge  from  the  Federal  Court.  The  next  alarm 
came  from  two  operatives  who  trailed  an  officer  just  off  the 
train,  who  turned  out  to  be  a  colonel  of  the  Quartermaster's 
Corps,  U.  S.  A.  The-  latter  was  able  to  make  his  escape. 
The  Chief  adds:  "  Just  how  many  suspects  were  held  up 
that  night  it  would  be  difficult  to  state.  Operative  No.  3 
turned  in  a  report  of  his  activities  the  next  morning.  It 
seemed  he  had  held  up  the  following  personnel :  One  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel, sixteen  Majors,  twenty-three  Captains,  forty- 
two  Lieutenants,  one  Lieutenant-Commander,  three  Ensigns, 
and  seven  Sergeants  —  a  total  of  ninety-two  suspects.  He 
closed  his  report  with  the  following  heartfelt  remarks: 
''  Well,  I  didn't  know  what  kind  of  uniform  the  German 
had.  Besides,  every  man  I  stopped  was  a  blond.  I  didn't 
stop  any  other  sort."  D.  J.  reported  it  was  satisfied  that 
no  German  submarine  officer  had  visited  Atlanta. 


ALABAIMA 

Birmingham,  Alabama,  was  one  of  the  most  active  and 
interesting  divisions  of  the  League.  It  took  on  1,849  cases 
under  the  Selective  Service  Act,  76  investigations  of  pro- 
Germans,  123  cases  of  deserters,  and  153  Red  Cross  loyalty 
reports,  besides  a  large  list  of  general  war  activities.  Some 
of  the  star  cases  of  deserter  hunting  at  Birmingham  are 
reported  in  another  chapter. 

Like  many  another  community,  Birmingham  also  had  its 
wireless  case,  and  like  most  cases  of  the  sort  throughout  the 
country,  it  created  m.uch  excitement  in  the  division  while 
it  lasted.  Certain  mysterious  light  flashes,  supposed  to  be 
signals,  were  reported  along  the  top  of  a  high  hill  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  city.  Operatives  detailed  on  the  case  could 
learn  nothing,  but  still  reports  kept  coming  in.  Finally,  one 
astute  visiting  chief  followed  a  high-powered  transmission 
line  along  the  mountain  and  found  that  the  limb  of  a  tree 
at  a  certain  spot  would  touch  the  wire  when  swayed  by  the 
wind.  The  repeated  rubbing  had  worn  away  the  insulation, 
exposing  the  bare  wire.     When  the  limb  came  in  contact 


428  THE  WEB 

with  the  wire,  especially  during  a  rainy  night,  a  spark  would 
be  made  when  the  limb  and  wire  separated :  The  Chief  adds : 
*'  When  the  limb  was  cut  off,  we  received  no  further  reports 
of  mysterious  signals."  There  has  been  bluish- white  lights 
which  some  thought  indicated  a  wireless  outfit  in  operation. 

Montgomery,  Alabama,  reports  one  of  those  curious  cases 
which  were  sometimes  met  with  in  the  course  of  the  League 's 
investigations.  This  was  a  straight-goods,  dyed-in-the-wool, 
bona-fide    conscientious   objector.      His   name   was   W.    A. 

P ,  a  farmer  w^ho  had  a  son  in  the  draft,  but  who 

needed  him  on  the  farm.  He  accompanied  the  boy  to  the 
examination  board,  after  the  young  man  had  been  arrested 
by  the  sheriff.  He  brought  his  Bible  to  the  board  and  tried 
to  prove  that  he  was  justified  in  his  objections;  that  he  was 
responsible  for  the  care  of  this  boy ;  that  the  Lord  had  given 
him  that  duty  and  no  one  else.  The  old  man  was  violently 
opposed  to  bloodshed  and  quoted  the  scriptural  words, 
''  Thou  shalt  not  kill,"  and  *'  Children,  obey  your  parents." 
The  Chief  had  a  long  talk  with  him  at  his  farm.  He  ad- 
mitted that  he  told  his  son  not  to  answer  questions,  and  that 
he  had  another  son  who  had  attained  his  eighteenth  birthday 
and  had  not  registered.  The  Chief  told  him  to  be  careful 
or  he  would  get  into  trouble.  He  said,  ''I  am  not  getting 
into  any  trouble;  it  is  you  people  who  are  provoking  the 
wrath  of  God."  All  the  agent  could  do  was  to  tell  him  that 
he   must   come   before   the   United    States    Commissioners. 

P was  brought  in  to  the  Committee,  and  bound  over 

to  the  grand  jury.  Before  the  trial,  he  stood  up  and  re- 
marked, *'  Let  us  have  a  word  of  prayer,"  and  prayed  fer- 
vently for  several  minutes.    He  carried  his  Bible  with  him 

at  all  times.    P seemed  to  be  generous.     "  He  came 

to  Montgomery  and  brought  a  couple  of  gallons  of  nice  syrup 
for  the  Deputy  and  Commissioners,"  says  the  Chief.  One 
would  think  that  the  A.  P.  L.  would  be  glad  to  have  peace 
at  any  price  in  such  surroundings,  even  without  syrup. 

Selma,  Alabama,  is  another  one  of  the  loyal  Southern 
communities.  "  We  kept  do^^ni  seditious  utterances,"  says 
the  Chief.  ' '  Without  doubt  we  have  had  a  most  wholesome 
effect  on  our  citizenry  by  letting  every  one  know  that  this 
was  not  a  time  for  anything  that  was  not  one  hundred  per 
cent  American.    I  do  not  believe  there  was  a  greater  force 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  429 

for  good  in  the  State  of  Alabama  than  the  American  Pro- 
tective League." 


■^S' 


FLORIDA 

Cocoa,  Florida,  is  not  far  from  one  of  the  Government 
shipyards,  and  so  had  had  some  contact  with  persons  in- 
clined to  be  pro-German.  By  way  of  explaining  the  addi- 
tional activities  sometimes  taken  on  by  the  League,  the  Chief 
says:  "  This  office  worked  with  the  Special  Agents  at 
Jacksonville,  and  with  officers  of  the  Seventh  Naval  District. 
We  have  also  given  information  to  the  Collector  of  Internal 
Revenue  concerning  those  who  should  pay  income  tax.  Our 
division  consisted  of  twenty-four  members  —  all  high-class 
men  who  could  be  relied  upon  in  any  emergency  that  might 
arise.  We  were  taking  steps  to  enlarge  the  organization 
when  the  German  balloon  burst." 

Eustis,  Florida,  was  more  especially  concerned  with  war 
cases.  Forty-one  cases  of  draft  delinquency  were  handled; 
two  slacker  raids  were  conducted,  and  there  was  a  little 
*'  work  or  fight  "  activity.  Eustis  is  in  a  county  which 
had  the  reputation  of  harboring  a  good  many  slackers  and 
deserters,  who  sought  peace  and  quiet  in  some  of  the  out-of- 
the-way  places.  Through  the  activities  of  the  local  A.  P.  L. 
division,  this  situation  was  cleared  up  distinctly.  The  Chief 
says:  '*  We  believe  we  have  been  instrumental  in  pro- 
tecting many  people  from  their  own  follies,  and  have  brought 
to  justice  men  who  were  engaged  in  obstructing  the  Govern- 
ment's war  activities  in  one  part  of  the  country  or  another. 
It  has  been  a  pleasurable  though  arduous  service  that  some 
of  us  have  rendered  in  this  work." 

Kissimmee,  Florida,  reports:  '*  All  quiet  along  the  Kis- 
simmee.  Our  community  was  singularly  free  of  annoyance 
of  any  character.  Two  or  three  persons  were  indiscreet  in 
their  language,  but  we  found  that  a  small  reminder  was 
sufficient  to  stop  the  talk." 


KENTUCKY 

Louisville,  Kentucky,  is  a  busy  and  famous  old  town  with 
reputation   for  being   engaged   in   the   manufacture    of 


430  THE  WEB 

trouble-making  products,  but  there  seems  to  have  been  very 
little  trouble.  Only  eighty-nine  cases  of  disloyalty  and  sedi- 
tion are  reported,  and  308  under  the  selective  service  regu- 
lations. 

Mr.  George  T.  Ragsdale,  the  first  Chief  of  Louisville  Divi- 
sion, instructed  his  men  to  keep  under  cover,  so  that  the 
personnel  of  the  division  was  very  little  known.  More  than 
700  reports  were  made  in  all,  and  nine  men  were  sent  to 
the  penitentiary.  Local  business  men  furnished  most  of  the 
working  capital.  Upon  Mr.  Ragsdale 's  resignation,  Mr.  J.  V. 
Norman  was  appointed  Chief,  taking  over  about  400  mem- 
bers. The  city  was  divided  into  nine  districts  and  the 
County  in  three,  with  the  usual  subdivisions  of  captains 
and  lieutenants  as  operatives.  The  membership  was  up  to 
about  700  at  the  time  of  the  signing  of  the  Armistice. 

Most  of  the  investigations  handled  by  the  Louisville  Divi- 
sion were  on  requests  coming  from  local  draft  boards,  al- 
though the  several  branches  of  the  government's  legal  or- 
ganization frequently  asked  for  aid.  Several  thousand  men 
were  questioned  in  the  slacker  raid  of  August  3.  Thirty-five 
men  were  taken  to  jail  and  fourteen  inducted ;  among  these, 
several  deserters.  Sometimes  at  a  race  track  a  quiet  investi- 
gation would  be  put  on  without  any  open  raid. 

Among  the  list  of  delinquents  turned  in  was  a  man  named 

Lyle  D.   B .     An  intercepted  letter  resulted  in   an 

examination  of  the  man's  mother,  who  refused  to  tell  where 
he  was.  Portland,  Oregon,  was  suspected  as  his  present  resi- 
dence. The  case  came  to  an  end  when  it  was  found  that  the 
delinquent  had  been  committed  to  the  Federal  penitentiary 
at  McNeil  Island,  Washington.  His  questionnaire  was  for- 
warded by  the  local  board  to  the  penitentiary  and  returned 
properly  filled  in.  The  man  had  a  fairly  good  alibi.  The 
usual  cases  of  religious  fanatics,  loud  talkers  and  bearers 
of  false  witness  were  uncovered  in  the  League 's  work.  Many 
of  the  best  citizens  of  Louisville  were  engaged  in  these  some- 
what undignified  and  often  thankless  tasks  of  ferreting  out 
such  matters. 

Lexington,  Kentucky,  as  might  easily  be  expected,  reports 
in  American  fashion :  *'  The  sentiment  of  our  entire  popula- 
tion is  hard  against  the  Germans  and  their  allies.  Our  peo- 
ple are  almost  unanimous  in  their  opposition  to  showing 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  43 1 

Germany  any  consideration,  even  with  furnishing  them 
food  after  their  defeat.  The  one  sentiment  is  that  Germany 
could  feed  herself  while  in  war;  now  let  her  feed  herself 
since  she  is  out  of  war. ' ' 

The  work  of  the  Lexington  Division  was  mostly  concerned 
with  the  local  and  district  boards.  It  handled  405  cases  of 
this  sort.  There  were  only  thirty  cases  of  disloyalty  and 
sedition  investigated,  and  forty  cases  of  word-of-mouth 
propaganda. 

Marion,  Kentucky,  says :  ' '  We  are  glad  to  report  that 
our  county  has  been  so  patriotic  that  little  of  any  importance 
required  to  be  done.  "\Ve  had  to  caution  a  few  of  our  citi- 
zens as  to  the  bad  results  of  opposition  to  the  United  States 
in  the  war.  We  have  no  foreign  element.  Our  citizens  come 
from  Virginia,  Tennessee  and  North  Carolina,  and  are  of 
old  families.  We  rarely  see  anyone  of  foreign  descent  in 
this  section  except  traveling  men  who  make  trips  through 
the  county." 

Somerset,  Kentucky,  had  a  bad  man  —  a  deserter  who 
escaped  from  Fort  Oglethorpe  once  or  twice,  the  last  time 
taking  along  his  rifle  and  pistol.  He  barricaded  himself  in 
an  old  house  at  Helenwood,  Tennessee.  The  A,  P.  L.  took 
him  all  right,  in  spite  of  his  threats.  He  is  in  Fort  Leaven- 
worth for  twenty  years.  From  far  off  Livingston,  Montana, 
came  a  request  to  Somerset  Di-vdsion  to  arrest  one  Willie 

McK ,  a  professional  evader.    He  was  found  attending 

church.  The  Chief  says :  ' '  We  walked  in  and  gave  him 
a  tap  on  the  shoulder,  and  told  him  to  come  out.  Just  as 
we  started  for  the  door,  the  choir  began  to  sing,  '  God  be 
with  you  till  we  meet  again.'  It  is  going  to  be  some  time." 
Somerset  concludes :  ' '  We  did  not  stop  when  the  Armistice 
was  signed,  but  kept  watching  everything  and  giving  the 
Government  the  best  that  was  in  us  !  "    Isn  't  that  fine  ? 


TENNESSEE 

The  A.  P.  L.  work  in  the  beautiful  and  historic  old  city 
of  Nashville  was  somewhat  circumscribed  because  of  the 
activities  of  other  agencies  already  in  existence.  The  divi- 
sion did  its  share  in  the  routine  work  of  war  activities,  appre- 
hending evaders,  conducting  numerous  investigations,  and 


432  THE  WEB 

vigilantly  keeping  tab  on  the  comings  and  goings  in  the  Old 
Hickory  Powder  Plant. 

Chattanooga,  Tennessee,  did  its  bit  and  did  it  well.  Ten 
prisoners  who  escaped  from  the  local  War  Prison  were  ap- 
prehended by  division  operatives,  and  brought  back  for  re- 
internment.  One  member  of  the  division  discovered  an 
extensive  sj^steni  of  graft  in  connection  with  the  Government 
construction  work  on  the  Nitrate  Plant  at  Sheffield,  Ala. 
Report  of  this  was  furnished  to  a  Special  Agent,  who  was 
detailed  by  the  Government  to  conduct  an  investigation. 
The  Chief  comments:  "  Just  what  can  be  proven  in  this 
case  remains  to  be  seen. ' ' 

Some  of  the  most  amusing  Chattanooga  investigations 
w^ere  those  of  the  religious  sect  known  as  the  "  Holy 
Rollers/'  Several  of  these  preachers  had  preached  sermons 
in  which  they  condemned  the  Red  Cross  and  the  Government 
generally.  These  men  were  apprehended,  and  members  of 
their  congregations  testified  at  local  headquarters.  Some 
of  these  preachers  were  moved  by  the  "  spirit  "  in  their 
testimony,  but  after  they  remained  in  jail  a  short  time,  they 
saw  the  Scriptures  in  a  different  light,  and  very  few  of  them 
offended  a  second  time. 

Another  Chattanooga  case  had  in  it  the  possibilities  of 
great  mischief.  A  large  amount  of  mail  to  an  illiterate 
mountaineer  caused  an  A.  P.  L.  operative  and  a  Special 
Agent  of  the  Department  of  Justice  to  go  to  the  top  of  Sand 
Mountain,  and  in  a  dirty  log  cabin  they  found  a  wagon  load 
of  I.  W.  W.  literature  and  correspondence  in  which  were 
letters  from  Emma  Goldman  and  other  leading  lights  of 
socialistic  faith.  The  man  himself  was  working  in  a  foundry 
turning  out  Government  orders;  he  was  organizing  a  strike 
at  the  time  he  was  taken  into  custody. 

Clarksville,  Tennessee,  is  in  the  loyal  Southern  country, 
and  is  very  free  from  alien  population.  There  were  only 
twenty-five  investigations  for  disloyalty  and  sedition,  and 
propaganda  was  almost  negligible.  As  this  is  the  tobacco 
producing  section,  there  was  considerable  property  investi- 
gated under  the  Trading  with  the  Enemy  Act,  and  some 
helpful  reports  were  made  to  the  Alien  Property  Custodian. 
The  League  members  were  active  in  all  the  war  work. 

Hopkinsville,  Tennessee,  had  a  great  deal  of  trouble  over 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  433 

illegal  transportation  of  wliiskey,  a  great  deal  of  which  went 
to  workers  in  government  powder  plants  in  an  adjoining 
city.  "  We  arrested  so  many  that  no  record  was  kept," 
says  the  Chief.    Things  became  quieter  later  on. 

Huntingdon,  Tennessee,  is  another  disgustingly  quiet  and 
satisfied  community.  "  People  nearly  all  natives,"  says  the 
report,  ''  and  mighty  few  expressions  of  disloyalty.  We 
have  watched  for  violations,  but  nothing  has  developed 
worthy  of  report." 

TEXAS 

San  Antonio,  Texas,  is  in  a  strongly  pro-German  neigh- 
borhood and  has  a  large  citizenry  of  German  descent.  It  is 
refreshing  nevertheless  to  see  that  in  this  good  old  Texas 
town,  once  distinctly  Spanish,  the  language  of  the  United 
States  prevails  to-day  and  only  one  flag  floats  over  the 
Alamo.,  There  were  thirty-four  investigations  for  sedition, 
and  twenty-four  cases  of  propaganda.  The  usual  number 
of  overseas  examinations  were  held.  On  the  whole,  San 
Antonio  seems  to  have  been  quiet  and  peaceful  and  distinctly 
loyal  in  every  way,  in  spite  of  her  location  so  close  to  New 
Braunfels. 

The  San  Antonio  Chief  concludes  his  too  brief  report  with 
a  little  story : 

The  telephone  at  my  elbow  rang  insistently.  The  man  at 
the  other  end  of  the  wire  was  incoherent,  and  I  could  not 
understand  what  he  wanted. 

"Hold  on  a  minute!"  I  finally  interrupted.  "Who  is  this 
speaking?" 

He  would  not  tell  me;  he  merely  said  that  he  was  a  friend 
of  mine.  I  did  not  like  to  give  information  over  the  'phone 
when  I  was  not  sure  as  to  whom  I  was  talking.  I  again 
insisted  that  he  give  me  his  name;  once  more  he  refused  to 
do  so,  reiterating  that  he  was  a  good  friend  of  mine.  I  could 
not  recognize  the  voice.    But  what  he  said  was  startling. 

Recently  I  had  been  appointed  Chief  of  the  American  Pro- 
tective League  for  this  District,  and  how  my  informant  had 
learned,  or  guessed,  that  I  was  engaged  in  it,  I  could  not  tell. 
I  did  not  like  to  undertake  a  wild  goose  chase;  at  the  same 
time,  if  I  should  refuse  to  follow  up  the  clue  he  gave  me,  the 
lives  of  many  might  be  endangered. 


434  THE  WEB 

Anything  could  happen  in  San  Antonio.  It  is  one  of  the 
oldest  cities  in  the  United  States,  and  ever  since  the  day  the 
Spaniard  founded  it,  has  been  a  hotbed  of  intrigue.  Just 
at  this  time  there  were  fully  twenty  thousand  troops  stationed 
in  the  various  Camps  about  the  City,  and  in  order  to  impress 
the  Mexicans  with  the  idea  that  we  were  not  altogether  help- 
less, it  had  been  suggested  that  a  patriotic  military  parade  De 
given.  This  was  to  take  place  the  following  day,  and  I  had 
spent  many  hours  helping  to  arrange  the  details.  And  now, 
my  mysterious  "friend"  had  told  me  over  the  'phone  that  he 
knew  certain  parties  were  plotting  to  throw  a  bomb  into  the 
parade;  that  if  I  would  go  to  the  certain  house  named  by 
him,  I  would  find  a  meeting  of  the  plotters  in  progress! 

There  was  no  time  to  be  wasted.     I  got  in  touch  with  one 

of  my  lieutenants,  M ,  and  asked  him   to  meet  me  in 

half  an  hour,  and  to  come  armed.  Before  leaving  the  office 
I  sent  for  a  couple  of  suits  of  overalls,  one  of  which  I  donned, 
and  when  I  met  M ,  I  gave  him  the  other. 

I  told  him  all  that  I  knew,  and  he  realized  that  it  wus 
serious.  We  parked  our  car  about  two  blocks  from  the  house 
designated  by  my  informant,  and  approached  it  afoot.  The 
neighborhood  was  questionable.  The  house  to  which  I  had 
been  directed  stood  a  few  feet  back  from  the  street  in  a  neg- 
lected tangle  of  shrubbery.  There  was  a  fence  about  the  prop- 
erty, but  no  gate.  It  was  a  small  frame  shack  with  two  rooms 
in  front  and  a  third  forming  an  ell.  We  walked  around  it 
cautiously  several  times,  and  finally  discovered  a  light  in  the 
ell.  The  blinds  were  all  tightly  closed,  and  it  was  but  a  faint 
glimmer  through  a  crack  that  we  saw.  We  crawled  carefully 
to  the  gallery  and  each  looked  through  the  crack. 

We  could  barely  distinguish  the  forms  of  five  men  huddled 
over  an  oil  stove  in  the  middle  of  the  room.  Three  were  in 
overalls  and  had  the  appearance  of  laborers;  one  wore  a 
shabby  old  suit  of  civilian  clothes,  and  the  fifth  appeared  to 
be   in  uniform.     Their  heads  were   close  together   and   they 

seemed  to  be  talking  in  low  tones,  but  neither  M nor  I 

could  distinguish  a  word  that  was  said. 

There  was  a  door  a  few  feet  from  where  we  M-ere,  and  I 
noticed  another  one  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  room.     I  told 

M to  go  around  to  the  other  door  and  I  would  remain 

where  I  was.  If  either  of  us  was  able  to  distinguish  any  sus- 
picious words,  or  if  we  found  any  reason  to  suspect  that  the 
five  men  were  actually  plotting,  a  low  whistle  was  to  be  the 
signal  to  the  other,  and  simultaneously  we  were  to  break  in 
the  door  and  rush  them. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  435 

While  the  whole  thing  had  the  appearance  of  a  conspiracy, 
and  I  was  inclined  to  take  the  bull  by  the  horns  and  give 

M the  agreed  signal,  I  was  also  suspicious  that  someone 

might  be  playing  a  practical  joke  on  me.  While  I  hesitated, 
M suddenly  sneezed! 

I  have  lived  in  the  Southwest  the  greater  part  of  my  life 
and  have  been  in  some  pretty  tight  places,  and  always  have 
prided   myself  on  my  ability   to  take  care   of  myself  in   an 

emergency;  but  the  next  thing  I  knew  after  M 's  sneeze, 

he  was  bending  over  me  trying  to  staunch  the  blood  that  was 
flowing  from  a  wound  over  my  right  eye,  at  the  same  time 
reading  the  riot  act  to  me  in  choice  language. 

"What  happened?"  I  asked,  feebly. 

"Why,  the  whole  darned  shooting-match  jumped  your  way, 
walked  over  you  and  beat  it!"  he  explained  in  exasperation. 
"What  I've  been  trying  to  find  out  is  why  in  hell  you  didn't 
shoot?" 

I  could  not  answer  in  words,  but  mutely  I  showed  him  that 
in  my  haste  I  carefully  had  put  on  the  overalls  over  my  clothes 
with  my  gun  in  the  usual  place  in  my  hip  pocket.  It  would 
have  taken  me  five  minutes  to  get  it  out. 

"It's  a  good  thing  you  had  it  so  well  hid,"  he  remarked. 
"They  might  have  taken  it  away  from  you!" 

We  searched  the  deserted  house.  Except  for  the  stove  it  was 
devoid  of  furniture,  and  we  found  nothing  in  the  way  of 
a  clue. 

We  arranged  for  a  strict  patrol  of  the  route  of  the  parade. 
Each  man  was  given  a  "beat."  If  any  man  saw  anything 
suspicious,  and  particularly  a  suspicious  package,  he  was  to 
investigate  and  report  at  once. 

The  parade  was  crossing  the  Houston  Street  bridge,  where 
I  happened  to  be,  when  I  saw  a  negro  man  elbowing  his  way 
to  the  front  of  the  crowd  along  the  curb.  In  his  right  hand, 
held  high  over  the  heads  of  those  about  him,  was  a  package 
wrapped  in  newspaper !  He  seemed  in  the  act  of  hurling  it 
into  the  street  when  I  sprang  forward  and  grabbed  the  up- 
raised arm,  dragging  the  negro  back  to  the  railing  of  the 
bridge. 

"What  have  you  got  in  that  package?"  I  demanded. 

"My  Gawd,  boss,  you'se  the  fou'th  man  to  ast  me  about  ma 
lunch  in  the  last  five  minutes.  If  it's  worrying  you  white 
folks  so  much,  guess  I'd  better  git  shet  of  it!" 

Before  I  could  prevent  him,  he  threw  it  into  the  river,  and 
turned  to  view  the  parade  with  a  muttered  opinion  on  my 
interference  with  his  personal  liberties.    All  we  succeeded  in 


436  THE  WEB 

accomplishing  was  scaring  a  poor  negro  out  of  his  lunch, 
but  whether  or  not  we  thwarted  others  in  a  worse  plot,  we 
never  knew. 

But  that  was  much  our  story  in  San  Antonio.  We  did  the 
best  we  knew.  Had  we  not  been  there,  and  were  it  not  known 
that  we  were  there,  matters  might  have  been  worse.  The 
makings  of  trouble  were  around  us  all  the  time. 

Laredo,  Texas,  on  the  Mexican  border,  was  organized  for 
business.  The  Chief  says:  "  We  have  very  few  alien 
enemies  resident  here.  Before  we  organized,  there  was 
some  talk  of  a  disloyal  nature,  but  this  situation  changed 
at  once  when  it  got  out  that  we  had  seventy-five  or  eighty 
members  whose  identity  was  unknown  to  the  public  but  who 
would  be  pretty  sure  to  be  out  for  business.  For  the  six  or 
eight  months  before  the  Armistice  we  heard  scarcely  a  word 
unfavorable  to  the  United  States  or  her  Allies.  We  think  we 
did  something  in  the  way  of  prevention  if  not  of  cure. '/ 

Yoakum,  Texas,  has  ten  cases  of  disloyalty  and  a  like 
number  of  word-of-mouth  propaganda.  A  good  local  chief 
of  a  fighting  family  says :  ' '  We  were  ready  at  all  times  to 
meet  any  emergency  regardless  of  distance  or  difficulty." 

Beaumont,  Texas,  is  in  the  oil  country,  and  such  centers 
quite  often  attract  alien  population.  The  Beaumont  report 
covers  sixty-three  cases  of  alien  enemy  activities,  eighteen 
cases  of  disloyalty,  and  ninety  cases  under  the  selective 
service  regulations. 

ARKANSAS 

Cotter,  Arkansas,  reports  that  it  is  a  community  with 
very  few  foreigners,  the  population  being  American  for 
generations  back.  The  Chief  says :  ' '  We  had  two  deserters 
who  lived  for  two  weeks  in  an  inaccessible  camp  in  the  moun- 
tains. They  finally  got  hungry,  came  in  and  surrendered. 
We  also  had  one  draft-dodging  case  of  a  peculiar  sort.  This 
young  man,  according  to  his  marriage  license,  should  have 
registered  in  June,  1917.  He  did  not.  We  traced  him  to 
Oldahoma,  and  from  there  to  Springfield,  Missouri.  He 
was  taken  into  custody  by  the  Chief  of  Police  at  that  point 
on  olir  order.     We  sent  a  certified  copy  of  his  marriage 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  SOUTH  437 

license,  but  he  had  enough  of  his  relatives  on  hand  to  swear 
to  his  true  age,  to  secure  his  release." 

Helena,  Arkansas,  also  comes  into  court  with  very  clean 
hands.  Its  report  shows  a  membership  of  127,  which  proved 
to  be  none  too  large,  as  all  hands  found  work  to  do.  Investi- 
gations were  handled  all  over  Arkansas,  Mississippi  and 
Louisiana. 

Fort  Smith,  Arkansas,  found  its  slacker  raids  more  inter- 
esting than  anything  else.  It  conducted  two  of  them,  a 
slacker  or  two  being  apprehended  each  time.  One  stranger, 
who  was  sufficiently  indiscreet  as  to  fail  to  register,  was 
unceremoniously  hauled  out  of  bed  and  turned  over  to  the 
local  war  board.  No  alien  enemy  activities  came  to  the  atten- 
tion of  this  division. 


OKLAHOMA 

The  State  of  Oklahoma  does  not  submit  a  wealth  of  mate- 
rial for  this  history  of  the  A.  P.  L.,  and  indeed  the  evidence 
seems  to  indicate  that  there  was  comparatively  little  material 
to  submit.  Chickasha,  Oklahoma,  sends  in  a  little  report, 
covering  three  alien  enemy  investigations ;  four  cases  of  dis- 
loyalty and  sedition ;  one  case  of  sabotage ;  five  cases  of  word- 
of-mouth  propaganda;  two  deserter  cases,  and  seven  char- 
acter and  loyalty  investigations. 

There  are  numerous  reports  at  hand,  which  are  made  in 
the  form  of  figures  only,  but  it  is  impossible  to  print  these  in 
detail. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  STORY  OF  THE  WEST 

Under  the  caption  of  The  West,  we  arbitrarily  are  group- 
ing all  of  the  states  lying  west  of  a  line  running  north  and 
south  from  the  western  borders  of  the  Dakotas  to  the  eastern 
edge  of  New  Mexico.  This  excludes  part  of  that  great  region 
long  known  in  America  as  the  Great  West,  —  a  country  that 
is  no  more,  and  never  again  can  be  on  the  face  of  this  earth, 
unless  war  and  pestilence  one  day  shall  quite  remove  our 
present  human  population.  What  we  retain  as  the  West 
for  A.  P.  L.  classification  purposes  still  has  some  distinct 
characteristics.  It  still  is  largely  unknown  land  to  Eastern 
citizens,  still  holds  the  flavor  of  a  romantic  past,  as  well  as 
that  of  a  great  and  unknown  future. 

The  region  thus  set  off  comprises  more  than  a  third  of  the 
acreage  of  the  United  States.  It  is  the  most  thinly  settled 
portion  of  the  United  States  and,  made  up  as  it  is  in  large 
part  of  arid  lands  or  mountainous  regions,  no  doubt  on  the 
average  it  always  will  remain  so.  Yet  here  lie  the  richest 
remaining  forests  of  America,  and  no  one  may  know  how 
much  of  additional  mineral  wealth.  Here  also,  our  country 
halts  at  the  shor9  of  the  Pacific  and  looks  westward  at  the 
future.  In  the  march  of  King  Charles,  his  knights  paused 
at  Rockfish  Gap,  and  those  merry  gentlemen  carelessly 
claimed  possession  of  all  those  unknown  lands  that  lay  to 
the  westward,  "  as  far  as  the  South  Sea."  Well,  we  have 
made  the  crossing  of  the  continent.  We  are  at  the  South 
Sea  now. 

Who  and  what  are  we,  however,  who  stand  at  the  edge  of 
the  Pacific  and  look  westward?  Are  we  Americans?  Who 
could  call  us  such?  We  are  not  the  same  Homeric  breed 
now  that  we  were  when  the  first  rails  went  west.  Taking 
our  arbitrary  section  herein,  west  of  the  Dakotas,  and 
studying  the  statistical  census  map  of  the  United  States 
made  in  1914  —  the  first  year  of  the  war  —  we  find  that 

438 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  WEST  439 

the  population  of  Montana  is  more  than  fifty  percent 
foreign-born,  or  of  foreign-bom  parentage.  The  same  is 
true  of  Utah,  Wyoming,  Colorado,  Arizona,  Nevada,  Idaho, 
California,  Oregon  and  Washington;  all  have  population 
thirty-five  to  fifty  percent  foreign  of  birth  or  parentage! 
This,  in  what  we  have  thought  was  the  American  West ! 

There  is  no  American  West.  There  is  no  America.  But 
for  the  Grace  of  God,  we  are  gone.  This  is  no  mere  rant. 
Study  the  census  maps  yourself  —  you  can  have  no  more 
thrilling,  no  more  fascinating  and  no  more  saddening  read- 
ing, search  how  you  may.  The  trouble  with  most  of  us 
Americans  was  that  we  did  not  know  our  America.  For 
America,  this  war  is  not  over.  It  is  just  beginning.  The 
more  we  set  aside  preconceived  notions  or  biased  and 
^nctuous  conclusions  based  on  suppositions  and  not  facts 
for  premises,  and  the  more  we  learn  the  actual  facts  regard- 
ing this  country's  problems  to-day,  the  more  we  shall  be 
obliged  to  that  sobering  and  wholly  distasteful  thought  that 
America  is  at  the  threshhold  of  her  real  war.  That  man 
does  not  live  who  can  with  any  color  of  authority  predict 
the  end  of  that  irrepressible  conflict.  No  Statue  of  Liberty 
can  avert  it ;  no  jaunty  melting  pot  doctrine  can  conjure  it 
away. 

But  the  great  West,  which  with  the  great  South  remains 
in  larger  percent  American  than  do  the  North  or  the  East, 
was  zealously  on  guard  throughout  this  war.  Few  of  our 
far-flung  marches  but  had  an  A.  P.  L.  outpost  of  Americans, 
and  these  were  eyes  of  the  same  sort  that  long  ago  looked 
do^vn  the  brown  barrels  of  long  rifles  in  the  frontier  days. 
If  we  had  a  frontier  now,  here  it  would  lie,  between  the 
Prairies  and  the  Pacific;  and  the  frontier  always  has  been 
loval.  It  was  loyal  in  this  war.  The  next  great  American 
will  come  from  the  land  of  the  old  Frontier.  What,  think 
you,  will  be  his  message?    Will  it  be  of  melting-pots? 

COLORADO 

Denver.  Colorado,  must  have  a  rather  thrifty  population, 
for  there  were  140  cases  of  food  hoarding  reported  from 
that  division.  Operatives  of  the  League  investigated  789 
cases  of  disloyalty  and  sedition  under  the  Espionage  Act, 


440  THE  WEB 

and  the  division  as  a  whole  worked  in  close  cooperation  with 
the  local  draft  boards.  The  Chief  says :  ' '  We  looked  into 
the  German  language  situation ;  also  vice,  liquor,  bootleg- 
ging, and  general  lawlessness  in  coal  mining  camps.  W^ 
investigated  the  loyalty  of  many  individuals  who  were  under 
consideration  for  membership  in  patriotic  associations  or 
for  City  or  State  positions. ' ' 

Delta  County,  Colorado,  had  one  simple  and  kindly  pro- 
German  section  foreman  who  left  spikes  sticking  up  in  the 
wagon  road  crossing,  so  that  they  might  possibly  destroy 
some  American  tires.  Very  thoughtful,  but  not  very  dam- 
aging. Apropos  of  one  of  the  more  lurid  happenings  in 
this  division,  the  Chief  says :  "  We  got  a  riot  call  to  a  small 
settlement  six  miles  out,  and  I  responded  with  three  details 
of  A.  P.  L.  members.  We  arrived  on  the  scene  at  11 :00 
p.  m.  and  found  thirty  armed  Americans  who  were  just  start- 
ing in  to  clean  up  a  settlement  of  eleven  German  families. 
We  quieted  things  until  we  could  make  an  investigation,  and 
then  found  that  a  poison  scare  was  at  the  root  of  the  trouble. 
A  German  administered  a  pint  bottle  of  bluing  to  one  of  his 
sick  horses.  The  horse  very  promptly  died.  Heated  imagi- 
ation  did  the  rest.  The  A.  P.  L.  certainly  prevented  blood- 
shed in  this  instance. 

Mancos,  Colorado,  gives  a  pleasant  little  touch  of  local 
color:  ''Just  a  few  days  before  war  was  declared  with 
Germany,  one  G.  B.  B ,  a  resident  of  Mancos,  Colo- 
rado, made  some  very  derogatory  remarks  to  the  effect  that 
the  war,  if  it  was  declared,  would  be  a  rich  man's  war,  for 
the  benefit  of  the  wealthy  class,  and  that  the  United  States 
had  no  business  in  war  with  Germany;  that  the  American 
flag  would  soon  be  dragged  in  the  dust,  and  by  the  Germans, 
if  war  were  declared.  His  wife  also  stated  that  the  Germans 
had  done  nothing  worse  than  the  soldiers  did  in  our  late 
civil  war.  Many  remarks  were  made  showing  sympathy  with 
the  German  cause.  When  the  news  of  the  first  big  victory 
of  the  Allied  armies  was  received  here,  an  impromptu  cele- 
bration was  held  on  the  streets  of  the  town,  and  all  of 
doubtful  sympathies  were  asked  to  mount  a  box  and  wave 
an  American  flag.     Some  half  a  dozen  did  so,  and  did  it 

gracefully  and  with  seeming  willingness,  but  Mr.  B 

refused  to  come  out.    Later,  at  another  celebration,  he  was 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  WEST 


441 


made  to  come  out  and  wave  the  flag,  though  he  did  it  with 
bad  grace  and  only  upon  being  strenuously  urged  to  do  so. 
He  made  a  long  talk  trying  to  tell  how  loyal  he  was,  but 
he  would  not  submit  to  waving  the  flag  until  really  made  to 
do  so,  and  then  in  a  very  insulting  way.  He  made  no  more 
violent  utterances  after  the  time  mentioned." 

Red  Cliff,  Colorado,  had  at  least  one  hectic  moment :  ' '  On 
October    14,    1918,   the    County    Treasurer's    deputy,    Mrs. 

F .  deliberately  tore  down  the  Fourth  Liberty  Loan 

poster,  remarking  that '  That  has  been  up  there  long  enough ; 
it  has  almost  ruined  our  flowers  in  the  window.'     It  was 

developed  that  our  County  Treasurer,  Mr.  C ,  was  a 

hoarder  of  food,  and  the  local  Food  Administrator  arrested 
him  and  fined  him  $25  for  the  benefit  of  the  Red  Cross. 
The  County  Treasurer  called  me  into  his  office,  caught  me 
by  the  throat  and  tried  to  scare  me,  saying :  '  I  understand 
you  are  showing  a  paper  around  here  trying  to  ruin  my 
character;  that  you  are  saying  that  I  am  a  dirty  slacker. 
Aren't  you  ashamed  of  yourself  to  circulate  such  dirty  lies 
about  me?  '  Then  the  fun  began.  I  struck  him  and  told 
him  that  if  he  was  guilty  of  hoarding  2,000  pounds  of  flour 
in  his  brother's  attic,  he  certainly  was  a  dirty,  low-down 
slacker  and  traitor.  He  weighs  about  225  pounds;  I  weigh 
143.  He  threw  me  down  and  sat  on  me  for  fifteen  minutes, 
trying  to  make  me  apologize.  I  didn't,  and  never  will  for 
any  man  of  pro-German  type." 

For  a  man  weighing  only  143  pounds,  the  Red  Cliff  chief 
seems  to  have  been  active.  He  sent  back  three  Canadian 
subjects  and  caused  a  decided  change  of  heart  in  a  pro- 
German  who  was  the  son-in-law  of  a  local  banker.  The 
suspect  got  wind  of  the  fact  that  he  was  being  investigated, 
and  his  conversion  was  very  prompt,  he  making  no  attempt 
to  sit  do^^Tl  on  the  local  Chief. 

Prowers  County,  Colorado,  investigated  fifty  cases  of 
mouth-to-mouth  propaganda,  a  notable  case  in  its  annals 
being  that  of  a  German  Lutheran  minister  who  refused  to 
answer  the  question  as  to  which  side  he  wished  to  win  the 
war.  It  did  not  take  him  long,  however,  to  realize  that  he 
had  made  a  blunder.  He  asked  for  time.  The  next  day  he 
declared  very  promptly  that  he  wanted  the  United  States 
to  win.    He  was  instructed  to  prove  this  by  preaching  and 


442  THE  WEB 

praying  it  in  private  as  well  as  in  public,  which  he  agreed 
to  do. 

MONTANA 

Billings,  Montana,  organized  its  A.  P.  L.  division  only 
three  months  before  the  signing  of  the  Armistice.  The  Chief 
says:  '*  It  was  a  privilege  to  serve.  We  are  grateful  for 
the  opportunity  that  came  to  us.  Our  field  was  small,  and 
our  time  of  service  was  short,  but  if  we  contributed  in  some 
small  way  to  the  success  of  the  League 's  work,  we  feel  amply 
repaid." 

Red  Lodge,  Montana,  is  a  coal  mining  town  with  a  con- 
siderable foreign  element,  so  it  early  organized  a  ''  Liberty 
Committee  "  of  two  hundred  citizens.  This  committee 
worked  in  with  the  A.  P.  L.  The  fact  that  a  division  of  the 
latter  body  was  organized  was  not  definitely  known,  but  the 
belief  got  out  that  the  Government  had  a  secret  agency 
working  at  Eed  Lodge  and  that  it  was  in  working  order; 
'*  which  it  was,"  says  the  Chief. 

NEW  MEXICO 

An  instance  of  shrewd  detective  work  comes  from  Albu- 
querque, New  Mexico,  whose  Chief  reports: 

We  received  a  copy  of  a  letter  mailed  from  this  point 
several  months  previous,  illegibly  signed,  but  clearly  ad- 
dressed to  a  man  named  H in  Holland.     The  letter, 

intercepted  by  censors,  contained  disloyal  statements  about 
Liberty  Bonds,  and  referred  to  ''  our  bank."  We  assumed 
from  this  that  the  writer  of  this  letter  was  a  banker.  The 
use  of  blank  paper  instead  of  a  business  letterhead  sug- 
gested that  he  was  a  transient.  Albuquerque  being  quite  a 
health  resort,  we  surmised  that  the  banker  was  probably  a 
well-to-do  health  seeker.  Accordingly,  we  combed  the  higher 
class  resorts  frequented  by  visitors  of  this  type.  Going 
through  the  list  of  patrons  at  one  of  these  places,  we  found 

the  name  of  A.  H ,  resident  of  an  Arkansas  town.    By 

referring  to  the  bank  directory,  we  discovered  that  this  man 
was  a  director  and  officer  in  the  bank  at  that  town.  We  sent 
this  information  to  the  National  Directors  in  Washington. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  WEST  443 

It  was  sufficient.  The  investigation  of  the  whole  case  con- 
sumed thirty  minutes.  We  admit  it  was  a  little  different 
from  the  usual  routine  that  we  usually  had  to  follow. 

UTAH 

Green  River,  Utah,  had  a  couple  of  cases  which  made  some 

trouble.     One  was  that  of  William  F.  A ,  and  Callie 

A ,  his  wife.    Evidence  was  secured  showing  that  this 

man  was  not  a  citizen,  although  he  had  voted  as  such.  It 
was  alleged  that  he  was  handling  high  explosives  in  viola- 
tion of  the  law  and  that  he  expressed  disloyal  sentiments. 
]\Iilitary  Intelligence  in  Salt  Lake  confiscated  the  arms  and 

ammunition,  and  had  A registered  as  a  German  alien 

enemy.  His  wife  was  very  bitter  in  her  denunciation  of  the 
United  States  and  the  Red  Cross.  The  son  of  the  two  was 
charged  with  being  a  draft  evader.     Another  man,  James 

H ::— ,  was  alleged  never  to  have  registered  for  the  draft, 

although  within  the  age  limit.  He  was  arrested,  admitted 
his  guilt,  and  was  turned  over  to  the  County  Board. 

Hiawatha,  Utah,  seems  to  have  been  for  the  most  part 
quiet  during  the  war.  This  division  says:  "  Due  to  the 
loyal  spirit  of  our  people,  our  report  is  short.  We  are  in  a 
thinly  settled  locality.  We  got  only  one  fine  imposed,  a 
violator  of  the  food  regulations,  who  pleaded  guilty." 

Richfield.  Utah,  is  a  farming  community  off  the  railroad, 
having  no  large  labor  organizations  to  make  trouble.  The 
Chief  says:  *'  A  few  pro-Germans  were  quietly  warned, 
and  that  was  all  that  was  necessary.  All  our  members  were 
organized  and  watchful,  and  there  was  not  much  to  do.  Any 
serv' ice  we  could  render  we  gladly  gave. ' ' 

Santaquin,  Utah,  sends  the  best  and  most  satisfactory 
kind  of  a  report:  '*  I  am  proud  to  state  that  this  little 
town  has  been  loyal  to  the  core.  We  have  not  found  a  single 
slacker  or  disloyal  case.  Investigated  one  or  two  cases  of 
men  asking  for  military  service  and  found  them  0.  K.  In 
all  the  drives  for  bonds  and  thrift  stamps,  we  have  '  gone 
over  the  top,'  and  we  hope  to  continue  with  the  same  good 
spirit  and  loyalty." 

Moab,  Utah,  has  a  local  chief  of  a  calm  turn  of  mind.  He 
savs  that  most  of  the  talk  he  heard  was  just  that  of  some 


444  THE  WEB 

ignorant  people  who  didn  't  know  the  difference  between  war 
and  peace  times.  The  Chief  adds  that  he  saw  only  three  or 
four  parties  who  refused  to  buy  bonds.  "  I  had  a  talk  with 
them,  and  they  bought  willingly,"  he  adds! 

From  Fillmore,  Utah,  the  Chief  reports:  *'  Not  much  to 
do  in  this  out-of-the-way  place.  We  watched  every  person 
who  came  into  town.  No  telling  when  we  might  not  have 
been  of  service  in  apprehending  some  person  badly  needed." 

Smithfield,  Utah,  reports:  ''  We  had  only  twelve  in  our 
organization.  Our  community  is  only  two  thousand  —  a 
farming  community  of  good  quiet  citizens.  We  support  the 
constitution ;  over-subscribed  for  Liberty  Bonds,  Red  Cross, 
and  War  Savings  Stamps.  If  you  realize  what  a  rural 
community  like  this  is,  you  know  there  is  not  much  to  do. 
We  have  done  what  we  could  with  the  local  boards  in  draft 
matters. ' ' 


ARIZONA 

Tucson,  Arizona,  is  the  land  of  sunshine  and  appears  to 
have  been  very  peaceful.  The  Chief  reports  that  there  were 
plenty  of  war  activities  going  on  all  the  time,  but  none  of 
these  were  of  a  nefarious  sort.  There  apparently  was  noth- 
ing wild  or  woolly  about  an  A.  P.  L.  job  in  Tucson  during 
war  times. 

Cochise  County,  Arizona,  was  once  somewhat  famous  for 
loading  up  a  railroad  train  with  undesirable  citizens  and 
then  telling  the  engineer  to  steam  ahead.  None  the  less,  this 
last  year  or  so  Cochise  has  had  absolute  peace  and  quiet. 
Ever  so  often,  of  course,  a  dissatisfied  citizen  would  go  over 
to  Mexico,  subsist  on  red  beans  for  a  while,  and  then  try  to 
get  back.  He  would  usually  find  the  getting  back  a  trifle 
more  difficult  than  the  going  over.  About  1,000  investiga- 
tions were  made,  most  of  them  referred  to  the  Department 
of  Justice  at  Bisbee  and  Douglas.  About  forty-five  or  fifty 
men  of  the  live-wire  type  did  the  work.  There  was  always 
an  element  of  danger  present,  though  nothing  ever  broke. 

Naco  is  directly  on  the  border  between  Mexico  and  the 
United  States.  Douglas,  not  far  distanct,  is  a  busy  town  of 
which  smelting  is  the  big  industry.  The  historic  town  of 
Tombstone  is  the  county  seat.    Bisbee  is  one  of  the  largest 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  WEST  445 

copper  camps  in  the  world.  There  were  good  men  and  true 
with  the  A.  P.  L.  in  all  of  these  towns,  and  they  did  fine, 
loyal  service  for  the  flag. 

WYOMING 

An  artless  report  comes  fi-om  Weston  County,  Wyoming: 
"  We  had  a  number  of  people  here  who  were  pro-German, 
but  all  such  cases  were  quieted  with  a  little  assistance. 
One  man  said  that  he  was  in  hopes  that  he  could  eat  another 
good  meal  in  his  own  country,  Germany.  When  he  got 
through  talking  to  all  the  people  who  waited  upon  him,  he 
went  home  and  committed  suicide. ' ' 

]\Ioran,  Wyoming,  is  hardly  a  place  where  you  would  look 
for  a  Russian  countess.  None  the  less,  Moran  contained  one 
for  a  while,  and  A.  P.  L.  found  her  there  and  made  certain 
investigations.  One  I.  W.  W.  leader  was  also  discovered 
by  alert  operatives. 

Sundance,  Wyoming,  is  in  the  short  grass  country,  and 
reports  but  little  German  activity.  Most  of  the  work  of  this 
division  had  to  do  with  draft  board  matters.  The  ranch 
country  of  the  west  was  in  a  very  large  measure  strictly 
loyal,  as  the  reports  show. 

IDAHO 

Idaho  Falls,  Idaho,  had  one  case  which  again  shows  the 
pronounced  anti-Americanism  of  the  German  Lutheran 
church  in  America  during  the  war.  C.  C.  M ,  a  minis- 
ter of  this  denomination  located  at  Blackfoot,  Idaho,  applied 
for  the  position  of  chaplain  in  the  United  States  Army.  The 
local  chief  of  the  A.  P.  L.  investigated  him  and  found  him 
to  be  violently  pro-German.  It  was  known  that  he  had 
threatened  to  blow  up  the  town  of  Blackfoot  with  dynamite, 
and  had  also  made  threats  to  poison  the  source  of  the  water 
supply  of  the  town.  Did  Rev.  Mr.  M get  his  chap- 
laincy? He  did  not.  A  local  applicant  for  the  position  of 
Captain  in  the  United  States  Army,  as  Inspector  of  Arms, 
was  also  investigated,  and  was  turned  down  on  account  of 
his  strong  pro-German  tendencies. 

Almo,  Idaho,  reports:     "  Our  locality  is  wholly  a  stock 


446  THE  WEB 

raising  section  and  is  sparsely  settled,  so  there  has  been  no 
disloyalty  or  trouble  whatsoever.  There  is  nothing  to  report 
except  that  the  people  of  this  section  are  absolutely  0.  K. 
in  their  loyalty  to  Uncle  Sam/' 

CALIFORNIA 

Long  Beach,  California,  sends  in  a  two-page  report  which 
is  entirely  too  modest,  because  it  covers  8,590  investigations. 
Out  of  this  number,  ninety  were  held  in  the  Federal  courts. 
Twenty  were  convicted,  and  three  were  found  not  guilty. 
Forty  slackers  and  deserters  were  arrested,  and  three  alien 
enemies,  who  were  taken  in  the  shipyards,  were  interned. 
Some  3,000  persons  who  had  made  indiscreet  remarks  against 
the  country  were  warned  to  good  effect. 

In  the  Long  Beach  district  were  four  shipbuilding  plants. 
It  was  learned  that  several  I.  W.  W.  's  were  numbered  among 
the  employees.  They  were  taken  from  the  shpyards  for 
cause.  The  Long  Beach  chief  was  reluctant  to  disband,  and 
when  the  time  came  to  do  so,  he  made  arrangements  by  which 
the  division  will  be  held  as  a  sort  of  reserve.  ''  If  at  any 
future  time  you  need  our  assistance,"  says  the  Chief,  ''  you 
will  find  us  waiting." 

Oakland,  California,  looked  into  the  color  of  the  hair  and 
eyes  of  387  persons  under  the  heading  of  disloyalty  and 
sedition.  There  were  356  investigations  under  the  draft  act. 
Oakland  Division  dealt  out  its  punishments  to  the  enemy 
drastically.  Seventeen  well-known  local  Germans,  business 
and  professional  men,  drank  a  toast  to  the  Kaiser  in  the 
Faust  Cafe,  a  German  restaurant.  The  A.  P.  L.  got  the 
necessary  evidence,  and  ten  of  these  men  were  convicted  of 
disloyalty.  The  court  put  the  punishment  at  three  months 
in  the  chain  gang,  and  a  fine  of  $250  each.  They  do  not 
now  know  any  such  phrase  as  ''  Hoch  der  Kaiser." 

Crescent  City,  California,  had  at  least  one  high  light. 
The  Chief  reports  that  an  enemy  alien,  a  baker,  learned  in 
some  way  that  his  loyalty  had  been  questioned,  and  imme- 
diately started  to  gather  all  the  rifles  and  pistols  that  he 
could,  declaring  that  with  a  dozen  guns  he  could  hold  the 
whole  town  at  bay.  Officers  searched  his  place  of  business 
during  his  absence,  and  found  several  of  the  guns  loaded. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  WEST  447 

The  man  claimed  to  be  a  naturalized  citizen,  but  could  not 
show  his  papers.    His  case  was  cared  for. 

OREGON 

The  far  Northwest  bordering  on  the  sea  caught  flotsam 
and  jetsam,  caught  problems,  as  seaboard  regions  always 
have  and  always  will.  The  city  of  Portland,  Oregon,  shares 
in  these  matters,  though  it  is  old,  settled,  and  much  disposed 
to  quiet.  Portland's  main  concern  in  life  is  the  growing  of 
roses;  but  early  in  the  war  Portland  had  already  thrown 
away  her  rose-growers'  club  and  set  her  hand  to  the  ax 
rather  than  to  the  garden  trowel.  As  a  city,  it  is  a  good 
place  for  roses,  but  a  poor  place  for  alien  enemies. 

A  certain  man  of  many  aliases,  whom  we  may  indicate 

as  D ,  was  arrested  for  being  found  within  half  a 

mile  of  the  Armory  without  an  enemy  permit.  He  was 
found  to  be  the  owner  of  a  great  deal  of  I.  W.  W.  literature. 
Investigation  proved  him  to  be  a  man  of  vitrolic  temper,  and 
one  possessed  of  considerable  means.  He  was  very  well 
investigated  and  jolly  well  interned. 

A  man  by  the  name  of  F was  arrested  as  a  German 

alien,  traveling  without  a  pass.  Very  naturally,  he  claimed 
to  be  a  Swiss,  as  do  all  German  waiters.  Investigation  of 
his  case  proved  he  w^as  in  the  habit  of  signing  as  a  sea- 
man, on  ships  about  to  sail,  and  then  refusing  to  go  on  board 
at  sailing  time.  His  peculiar  conduct  got  him  in  wrong  with 
the  Sailors'  Union.  A  close  examination  developed  that  he 
was  a  former  German  naval  officer,  and  pictures  of  him  were 
found  in  the  German  uniform.  He  was  interned  as  a  dan- 
gerous alien. 

If  Portland's  A.  P.  L.  could  not  get  a  man  one  way,  there 

were  always  other  ways  available.    One  J.  B ,  placed 

under  suspicion  by  the  angry  accusation  of  a  woman  whom 
he  claimed  to  be  his  wife,  was  discovered  to  be  a  draft 
evader  from  Chicago.  It  was  found  also  that  he  had  a 
real  wife  living  in  Oklahoma.  The  pretending  wife  forged 
the  wife's  name  to  the  man's  questionnaire,  thus  securing 
for  him  a  deferred  classification.  He  was  indicted  for  viola- 
tion of  the  Mann  Act  and  Conscription  Act,  and  got  eleven 
months  in  jail. 


448  THE  WEB 

The  first  slacker  convicted  and  sentenced  for  violation  of 

the  Conscription  Act  in  the  State  of  Oregon  was  C.  B 

of  Portland,  who  was  discovered  to  have  failed  to  register. 
He  was  arrested  the  10th  of  July,  1917,  tried  and  convicted 
and  served  thereafter  as  an  example. 

The  hundreds  of  cases  in  Portland  were  of  much  the  same 
sort  as  those  arising  in  other  cities.  The  law  of  averages 
held  good.     Once  in  a  while  a  man  was  reformed,  and  once 

in  a  while  a  flivver  was  found.     E.  B ,  of  California, 

registered  at  Fairfield,  California,  June  5,  1918,  was  posted 
as  a  deserter  and  arrested  by  an  operative  of  the  A.  P.  L. 
at  Portland,  Oregon.  He  was  of  Swedish  descent,  and  the 
hearing  of  his  case  developed  that  many  of  his  friends  had 
told  him  that  he  could  get  out  of  the  Army  by  claiming 
exemption  as  an  alien  subject  to  deportation.  It  was  ex- 
plained to  him  that  if  he  went  back  to  Sweden  under  depor- 
tation, he  could  never  again  return  to  the  U.  S.  as  a  citizen. 
This  cleared  up  his  mind  distinctly,  and  he  resolved  to  go 
into  the  Army  and  will  probably  make  a  good  citizen. 

Canyon  City,  Oregon,  says :  ' '  We  had  one  man  who  was 
constantly  spilling  over  in  favor  of  Germany.  Our  mem- 
bers took  him  over  the  jumps  and  made  him  subside.  He 
could  have  been  convicted,  but  neighbors  promised  to  be 
responsible  for  him,  and  they  kept  their  word.  Our  people 
as  a  whole  were  very  loyal,  and  we  had  only  a  small  number 
of  cases  to  handle." 

WASHINGTON 

Yakima,  Washington,  tabulates  its  activities  as  93  cases 
of  disloyalty  and  sedition,  ten  cases  of  word-of-mouth 
propaganda  and  sixteen  I.  W.  W.  cases,  besides  the  usual 
routine  work. 

Snohomish,  Washington,  sends  in  a  report  indicative  of 
an  unexpected  amount  of  activity.  There  were  302  cases 
of  disloyalty  and  sedition,  nineteen  of  sabotage,  twenty-four 
of  anti-military  activity,  fifteen  of  propaganda,  as  well  as 
116  cases  under  the  selective  service  regulations,  and  124 
under  the  "  work  or  fight  "  order.  The  Chief  closes  his 
modest  summary  with  the  statement  that  the  work  was 
largely  connected  with  I.  W.  W.  and  Socialistic  activities 
such  as  were  noted  in  the  Northwest  during  the  war.     He 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  WEST  449 

says :  '  *  We  had  the  state  secretary  of  the  Socialists  in  the 
penitentiary.  Many  I.  W.  W.'s  were  jailed,  and  many  more 
were  inducted  into  the  Army.  Some  of  the  latter  tribe  have 
been  court-martialed  since  entering  the  Army. ' '  As  it  were, 
and  so  to  speak,  Atta  Boy ! 

ALASKA 

And  now^  let  us  give,  as  the  very  last  tribute  of  The  Four 
Winds,  the  report  of  a  town  which  may  seem  a  long  way 
from  home  to  many  readers,  but  which,  out  of  all  the  many 
hereinbefore  mentioned,  will  show  best  of  all  the  far-flung 
activities  of  the  American  Protective  League.  This  report 
comes  from  Anchorage,  xVlaska.  Leopold  David  is  Chief 
at  this  far  off  station,  and  every  word  that  he  has  written 
shall  go  to  the  readers  of  the  League : 

Members  of  the  League  have  been  active  in  Red  Cross  work 
here,  in  food  conservation,  and  in  the  sale  of  Liberty  Bonds 
and  War  Savings  Stamps.  From  the  moment  the  Anchorage 
branch  was  first  organized,  I  impressed  upon  the  members  the 
necessity  of  counter-propaganda  to  refute  any  insinuations 
or  charges  that  they  might  hear  against  the  causes  leading 
the  U.  S.  into  war,  and  the  conduct  thereof.  Everything  in 
connection  therewith  which  was  derogatory  to  the  interests 
of  the  U.  S.  was  immediately  traced  to  its  source,  if  possible, 
and  the  false  impression  corrected.  We  have  a  large  foreign 
element  here  employed  in  railroad  construction,  and  members 
of  the  League  made  it  a  point  in  their  trips  up  and  down  the 
line  to  explain  the  reasons  for  all  restrictions. 

When  a  strike  was  threatened  on  the  Government  railroad 
last  year,  members  of  the  League  explained  to  the  men  the 
necessity  of  staying  at  work  until  their  case  could  be  decided, 
so  as  not  to  interfere  with  the  development  of  the  coal  fields 
to  which  the  road  was  being  built,  as  coal  was  a  war  necessity. 
I  believe  that  such  action  by  the  League  was  in  large  measure 
responsible  for  avoiding  a  strike. 

Members  of  the  League  were  on  all  committees  in  connec- 
tion with  war  work  activities,  as  well  as  on  the  Territorial 
Council  of  Defense,  of  which  the  Chief  of  the  Anchorage 
branch  acted  as  Chairman.  During  the  time  the  League  was 
organized,  every  member  did  his  best  for  the  Interests  of  the 
country,  and  no  need  arose  for  disciplining  any  member.    The 


450  THE  WEB 

work  of  the  League  was  carried  on  in  such  an  unostentatious 
manner  that  very  few  people  knew  of  its  existence  except 
the  members. 

It  has  a  safe  and  significant  sound  —  the  A.  P.  L.  at 
Anchorage.  Not  a  large  place,  indeed,  but  there  were  seven 
cases  of  alien  enemy  activity,  twenty-eight  of  disloyalty  and 
sedition,  five  of  anti-military  activities  and  thirty-two  of 
propaganda,  beside  two  I.  W.  W.  investigations.  Anchorage 
seems  to  have  been  uncertain  whether  to  work  or  fight  in 
some  instances ;  206  cases  came  up  of  this  sort.  In  addition 
to  these,  143  draft  cases  came  before  the  local  boards,  as 
well  as  62  slacker  cases.  Twenty-two  cases  under  the  head 
of  liquor,  vice  and  prostitution  were  disposed  of.  The  Food 
Administration  had  only  four  cases.  It  is  gratifying  to  note 
that  every  head  and  sub-head  of  the  report  is  filled  out  con- 
scientiously and  carefully. 

We  may  now  cease  the  reading  of  further  reports  from, 
the  four  points  of  the  compass  in  America,  and  rest  with 
this  one  from  Anchorage,  submitting  once  more  the  convic- 
tion that  these  many  varying  reports,  covering  multifold 
lines  of  investigation,  make  the  best  and  truest  reflex  of 
America  ever  gotten  together  in  printed  form.  The  reading 
and  summarizing  of  the  reports  made  an  extraordinary 
experience,  such  as  can  hardly  have  come  to  many  indi- 
viduals, probably  to  none  outside  of  the  Department  of 
Justice;  and  it  is  not  known  whether  a  similar  enterprise 
ever  has  been  undertaken  even  in  that  great  office.  By  no 
means  is  it  to  be  supposed  that  all  the  reports  sent  in  have 
been  mentioned  in  these  pages  —  only  a  small  fraction  have 
had  even  the  briefest  mention.  IMany  hundreds  remain 
unnamed  in  public  as  do  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  who 
made  them  up,  not  asking  recognition  for  their  work.  It 
would  be  cheap  to  thank  such  men,  or  to  apologize  to  them. 
In  A.  P.  L.,  each  of  us  has  done  the  best  he  knew.  For  that, 
there  is  higher  and  better  approval  than  that  of  any  printed 
page. 


BOOK  IV 

AMERICA 


''  IN  FLANDERS  FIELDS  " 

Challenge  of  the  Dead  in  Batti^b 

In  Flanders  Fields  the  poppies  blow 
Between  the  crosses,  row  on  row, 
That  mark  our  place;  and  in  the  sky 
That  larks  still  bravely  singing  fly. 
Scarce  heard  amid  the  guns  below. 
We  are  the  dead.     Short  days  ago 
We  lived,  felt  dawn,  saw  sunset  glow, 
Loved  and  were  loved,  and  now  we  lie 
In  Flanders  Fields. 

Take  up  our  quarrel  with  the  foe ! 
To  you  from  falling  hands  we  throw 
The  Torch  —  be  yours  to  hold  it  high  1 
If  ye  break  faith  with  us  who  die. 
We  shall  not  sleep  though  poppies  grow 
In  Flanders  Fields. 

—  Col.  John  McCras. 


From  the  volume  "  In  Flanders  Fields,"  copyrig-ht,  1919,  by  G.  P. 
Putnam's  Sons.     Printed  by  permission. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  RECKONING 

Our  Dutj  to  the  Soldier  —  Our  Lasting  Quarrel  With  the 
Foe  —  The  Story  of  the  Census  —  No  More  Traitors  — 
Shutting  the  Gates  Against  the  Huns  —  The  New  Patri- 
otism for  All  Americans. 

Vox  popidi,  vox  del  is  a  fine  phrase.  But  fine  phrases 
often  half -state  or  mis-state  facts  for  sake  of  the  half-idea's 
sound.    Many  popular  conceptions  are  wide  of  the  truth. 

The  world  had  come  to  call  the  French  people  light,  fickle, 
inconstant,  volatile,  incapable  of  grave  and  deep  emotions. 
That  was  the  popular  American  idea  of  France  up  to  1914. 
The  man  who  would  voice  that  idea  now  would  be  treated 
Avith  anger  or  silent  contempt  by  all  the  world.  Now  we 
know  the  silent,  modest,  simple,  enduring  faith,  the  un- 
faltering courage,  the  undying  flame  of  heart  which  made 
the  real  France. 

We  thought  Great  Britain  cold,  phlegmatic,  emotionless. 
Who  would  say  that  to-day  of  a  brave  and  strong  people 
trying  their  best  to  ask  us  not  to  mention  their  battles 
against  odds,  their  steadfast  courage  in  holding  the  line, 
but  to  feel  and  understand  the  real  admiration  and  love 
Britain  really  feels  for  us  in  these  days. 

We  Americans  thought  ourselves  above  fickleness  and 
lightness  always,  boasted  always  of  our  common  sense  and 
steady  practical  point  of  view.  We  called  France  hysterical. 
Was  it  so?  No.  Once  again  popular  counsel  is  wrong.  It  is 
we  Americans  who  are  the  most  hysterical  people  in  the 
world.  We  make  a  purpose  and  forget  it.  We  erect  a  hero 
and  forget  him.  We  believe,  boast,  acclaim,  hurrah  —  and 
forget.  We  are  easily  excited  —  it  is  we  who  most  easily  grow 
''  high  headed,"  as  the  French  say.  It  is  we,  of  all  nations, 
who  m.ost  quickly  forget. 

In  that  fact  regarding  the  American  character  lies  the 

453 


454  THE  WEB 

great  hope  of  Germany  to-day.  It  is  the  great  fear  of  our 
gallant  friends  in  arms,  who  held  the  line  from  which  we  so 
long  were  absent.  It  is  the  great  danger  of  America.  Lest 
we  forget !  Lest  we  forget !  The  danger  is  that  we  shall  for- 
get.    And  if  we  do,  the  great  victory  of  this  war  is  lost. 

Our  Army  is  turned  back  toward  home  again.  "We  greet 
our  soldiers  with  much  blare  of  trumpets.  We  mention  large 
plans  of  industry  for  to-morrow.  We  slap  each  man  in 
uniform  on  the  back  and  say :  ' '  Fine !  Noble !  You  are  a 
hero !    You  have  saved  the  world !  ' ' 

But  to-morrow  —  To-morrow !  And  once  more,  what  of 
to-morrow ! 

The  soldier  comes  back  to  his  old  world  shyly  glad  that 
he  still  lives,  hoping  for  the  renewed  touch  of  hands  he 
knew,  seeking  the  place  in  life  that  once  was  his.  But,  in  spite 
of  our  protestations,  that  place  is  no  longer  his.  It  is  as 
though  he  really  were  dead.  The  waters  have  closed  over 
his  place  and  he  is  no  more.  To-morrow  he  is  forgotten  — 
and  he  may  listen  to  stay-at-home  stories  of  how  the  war 
was  fought  and  won  —  the  * '  history  ' '  of  this  war,  which, 
like  all  other  history,  will  not  be  the  truth  but  what  we  all 
accept  as  the  truth  because  that  is  the  easiest  thing  to  do. 

But  if  the  soldiers  of  this  country  are  to  come  back  only 
to  the  old  America,  the  hurrying,  scrambling,  hectic,  hys- 
terical America  —  and  those  are  our  deserved  adjectives 
more  than  any  other  people's  —  then  we  have  not  won  this 
war  but  have  lost  it. 

Our  quarrel  with  yonder  foe  is  not  done.  We  shall  have 
been  faithless  to  our  own  blood  and  kin  if  now  we  forget. 
The  war  begins  now ;  not  ends.  It  must  yet  be  fought  out 
here  at  home  in  America.  It  will  require  all  our  courage  to 
win  it;  if  indeed  it  can  still  be  won. 

There  have  been  some  great  editorials  struck  off  in  the 
white  heat  of  American  conviction  in  these  tremendous  days 
following  the  Armistice  and  before  the  conclusion  of  the 
Peace  Conference.  Here  is  one  from  a  Chicago  journal 
which  ought  to  be  read  and  remembered  by  every  statesman 
and  every  citizen  in  America. 

Those  sentimental  souls  who  think  Lloyd  George  and  Clemen- 
ceau  are  "too  severe"  in  insisting  that  Germany  must  pay  to 


THE  RECKONING  455 

the  limit  of  her  capacity  for  the  damage  she  has  wrought, 
should  consider  the  speech  in  which  Herr  Ebert,  temporary 
dictator  in  Berlin,  welcomed  the  returning  Prussian  troops, 
especially  the  following  paragraph  of  that  speech: 

You  protected  the  homeland  from  invasion,  sheltered  your 
wives,  children  and  parents  front  flames  and  slaughter  and 
preserved  the  nation's  icorkshops  and  fields  from  devastation. 

This  to  the  soldiers  whose  bestiality  has  made  the  very  name 
of  Prussia  a  stench  in  the  nostrils  of  a  decent  world. 

There  is  not  in  Ebert's  speech  a  hint  of  repentance  for  the 
atrocious  crimes  which  Germany  has  committed.  There  is  no 
recognition  that  Germany  has  committed  crimes.  Instead, 
there  is  a  boasting  glorification  of  the  returning  armies,  and 
a  reminder  to  the  nation  that  German  lands  have  been  kept 
inviolate.  It  is  one  in  sentiment  with  the  kaiser's  speech  six 
months  or  so  ago,  in  which  he  commanded  his  subjects  who 
complained  of  their  sacrifices  to  look  at  the  devastated  fields 
and  cities  of  France,  and  see  what  war  on  their  own  ground 
would  mean. 

The  victorious  allies  are  civilized.  Therefore,  they  can  not 
repay  German  crimes  in  kind.  They  can  not  reduce  Frankfort 
to  the  present  condition  of  Lens,  or  desolate  the  Rheingau 
as  von  Hindenburg  desolated  Picardy.  But  in  some  way,  they 
must  bring  home  to  the  German  people  both  the  villainy  and 
the  failure  of  the  German  spring  at  the  throat  of  Europe,  and 
there  seem  to  be  but  two  methods  of  doing  this.  One  is  to 
inflict  personal  punishment  on  the  men  responsible  for  the 
grosser  outrages,  and  the  other  is  to  make  the  German  people 
pay,  and  pay,  and  pay  for  the  ruin  which  they  wrought. 

Germany  is  not  dead  or  defeated  in  America.  She  will 
raise  her  head  again.  Again  we  shall  hear  the  stirring  in 
the  leaves,  and  see  arise  once  more  the  fanged  front  which 
has  so  long  menaced  the  world.  The  time  to  scotch  that 
snake  is  now,  to-day ;  and  this  is  no  time,  when  our  maimed 
men  are  coming  home,  when  our  young  boys  are  growing  up, 
to  be  faithless  to  those  men  who  —  their  eyes  still  on  us  as 
they  fling  to  us  the  torch  of  civilization  —  lie  not  yet  content 
nor  quiet  in  Flanders  Fields. 

The  great  debt  of  the  world  is  by  no  means  yet  paid. 
Whether  or  not  Germany  pays  to  the  material  limit,  is  not 
so  much.  Whether  or  not  we  get  back  a  tenth  of  our  war 
money,  is  not  so  much  —  that  is  not  the  way  the  great  debt 
of  the  world  is  going  to  be  paid.     We  cannot  pay  it  by 


456  THE  WEB 

oratory  or  by  fine  phrases,  or  by  resolutions  and  conferences 
and  leagues  of  nations.  We  cannot  pay  it  with  eulogies  of 
the  dead  nor  monuments  to  the  living  heroes.  We  cannot 
pay  it  by  advancing  our  breasts  again  against  shot  and  shell. 

The  debt  of  the  world  must  be  paid  by  America.  We 
can  pay  it  only  by  making  a  new  and  better  democracy  in 
America.  We  can  pay  it  only  by  renewed  individual  sacri- 
fices and  a  renewed  individual  courage. 

We  must  remake  America.  We  must  purify  the  source  of 
America's  population  and  keep  it  pure.  We  must  rebuild 
our  whole  theory  of  citizenship  in  America.  We  must  care 
more  for  the  safety  of  America's  homes  and  the  safety  of 
the  American  ideal.  We  must  insist  that  there  shall  be  an 
American  loyalty,  brooking  no  amendment  or  qualification. 

That  is  to  say,  we  must  unify  the  American  populace  — 
or  we  must  fail;  and  the  great  debt  of  the  world  must  re- 
main unpaid ;  and  the  war  must  have  been  fought  in  vain. 

The  old  polyglot,  hubbub,  hurdy-gurdy  days  of  America 
are  gone.  We  are  no  longer  a  mining  camp,  but  a  country, 
or  should  be  that.  Happy-go-lucky  times  are  done  for  us. 
We  must  become  a  nation,  mature,  of  one  purpose,  re- 
solved at  heart.  Now  we  shall  see  how  brave  we  really 
are,  how  much  men  we  are. 

What  is  America  to-day?  What  undiscovered  soul  was 
there  lying  under  the  paint  and  the  high  heels  and  the 
tambourine  and  the  bubbling  glass  in  the  fool's  paradise  of 
our  excited  lives?  What  was  there  of  sober  and  resolved 
citizenship  under  the  American  Protective  League  —  a  force 
so  soon  developed,  so  silently  disbanded?  Yery  much  was 
there.  All  that  a  nation  needs  was  there -^  if  that  nation 
shall  not  forget. 

It  is  one  thing  if  a  quarter  million  men  go  back  to  business 
and  forget  their  two  years  of  sacrifice;  if  three  million 
soldiers  also  forget  their  sacrifices  and  simply  drop  back  into 
the  old  business  world  which  they  left.  But  it  is  quite  an- 
other thing  if  three  and  a  quarter  million  American  citizens, 
sobered  and  not  forgetful,  do  take  up  the  flung  torch  and 
say  that  the  dead  of  Flanders  shall  rest  content  —  not 
merely  for  a  day  or  so  remembered  —  not  merely  for  a  year 
or  two  revenged,  but  for  all  the  centuries  verified  and  made 
of  worth  and  justified  in  their  sacrifices. 


THE  RECKONING  457 

A  part,  only  a  small  part,  of  the  work  of  the  American 
Protective  League  is  done.  We  who  silently  pass  back  yet 
further  beyond  recognition,  are  not  disbanded  at  all.  The 
flung  torch  is  especially  in  our  own  hands.  We  have  been 
only  pretenders  in  this  League,  we  have  been  only  mummers 
and  imposters  in  this  League,  if  we  do  not  individually  carry 
on  the  work  for  the  future.  That  work,  as  we  take  it,  is  to 
make  America  safe  for  Americans,  and  to  leave  each  man 
safe  in  his  own  home,  in  a  country  of  his  own  making,  at  a 
table  of  his  own  choosing. 

When  work  on  this  book  was  first  begun,  it  seemed  to  all 
concerned  that  the  great  matter  was  to  accumulate  instances 
of  shrewdness  in  catching  criminals;  stories  of  plots  foiled 
and  villains  thwarted.  We  all  of  us  wanted  to  see  stalk  by 
with  folded  arms  a  tall,  dark,  mysterious  stranger  in  a  long 
cloak,  with  high  boots,  and  a  wide  hat  pulled  low  over  his 
brow.  We  wanted  him,  in  the  final  act,  to  pull  off  his  hat 
with  the  sweeping  gesture  of  one  hand,  his  false  moustache 
with  the  other,  and  stand  revealed  before  us,  smooth-faced 
and  fair  of  hair,  exclaiming  "  It  is  I  —  Clarence  Hawkshaw, 
the  young  detective !  ' '  We  shared  the  American  thirst  for 
something  exciting. 

It  became  obvious,  as  the  great  masses  of  sober,  conscien- 
tious revelations  from  the  very  heart  of  America  came  roll- 
ing in  and  piling  up  in  cumulative  testimony,  that  what  had 
at  first  seemed  the  most  desirable  material  was  the  least 
desirable.  If  this  record  is  to  have  any  ultimate  value  — 
and  it  should  have  great  historical  value  —  that  must  be, 
not  because  of  a  few  flashy  deeds,  but  because  of  a  great, 
sober,  underlying  purpose.  Our  final  figure  of  the  A.  P.  L. 
man  is  not  to  be  a  Hawkshaw,  but  —  an  American. 

When  the  time  came  to  call  a  halt  and  to  disband,  there 
was  not  a  member  of  the  League  who  did  not  lay  down  his 
work  sober  and  grave  of  heart.  The  sum  of  the  reaction  of 
all  these  reports,  large  and  small,  from  the  hundreds  of 
centers  where  the  League  was  active,  leaves  any  man  ac- 
quainted with  the  facts  convinced  that  America  has  done 
her  part  splendidly,  here  at  home,  in  the  war.  It  is  splen- 
did—  what  Am.erica  has  done.  Far  more  splendid,  what 
America  is.    Still  more  splendid,  what  America  is  to  be. 

The  best  reading  for  any  American  in  these  days  is  the 


458  THE  WEB 

census  map  of  the  United  States.  Next  year  we  shall  have 
a  new  one,  for  by  then,  ten  years  more  of  our  history  will 
have  been  completed.  The  census  map  comes  out  once  every 
decade,  printed  in  different  colors,  showing  the  location  of 
the  foreign-born  in  the  United  States.  The  American-born 
regions  have  appeared  in  steadily  lessening  areas  as  the 
decades  have  passed. 

It  is  only  with  a  grave  heart  that  any  real  American  can 
face  the  census  map  to-day.  The  conviction  is  inevitable 
that  we  have  been  too  long  careless  of  our  racial  problems. 
If  we  are  to  have  an  America  now,  we  must  change.  Our 
golden  age  of  money-making  is  not  a  double  decade  in  extent. 
We  cannot  go  that  road  another  twenty  years.  If  your  son 
is  meant  to  be  an  American,  have  him  study  the  census  map 
and  the  story  of  the  A.  P.  L.  Then  he  will  learn  something 
about  his  OAvn  country.  He  has  not  known.  His  father  has 
not  known. 

The  English  came  early  in  our  history  and  the  Scotch- 
Irish,  the  finest  of  frontier  stock.  The  Pennsylvania  Dutch 
came  and  built  homes.  Then  came  the  Irish,  facile  and  quick 
to  blend.  Our  immigration  before  the  Civil  War  was  north- 
European —  sturdy  stock,  fit  for  the  forests  and  prairies 
and  the  vast  new  farm  lands  of  the  West.  Now  we  began  to 
mine  and  manufacture  more,  and  our  immigrants  changed 
the  colors  of  the  census  map.  We  began  to  import  work 
cattle,  not  citizens,  for  our  so-called  industrial  captains. 
Steamship  companies  combed  southern  and  southeastern 
Europe.  Our  miners  could  not  speak  English.  The  Irish- 
man worked  no  more  on  the  railroads,  the  sewers,  the 
streets  —  he  shrank  from  the  squat  foreigner  as  the  lean 
Yankee  shrank  from  him  —  as  the  Italian,  in  turn,  will 
shrink  from  the  Russian  bolshevist,  if  we  allow  him  to 
swarm  in. 

The  map  shows  you  all  these  things  inexorably.  It  shows 
the  shrinking  of  the  American-born  regions  to-day  to  only 
a  small  spot  on  the  tops  of  the  Cumberlands  in  Kentucky, 
Tennessee,  North  Carolina  and  a  corner  of  Alabama  and 
Georgia.  Now  check  up  this  rough  census  outline  with  the 
reports  printed  in  these  pages  from  all  over  America.  We 
soberly  must  conclude  that  America  is  not  America.  We 
find  that   the   great   states   of   each   coast   are   practically 


THE  RECKONING  ^  459 

foreign  —  New  York  most  of  all ;  that  the  Bolshevik!  abound 
in  the  mines  of  Pennsylvania,  Michigan  and  Montana,  where 
coal  and  copper  and  iron  are  found ;  that  Southern  Europe 
has  not  yet  moved  its  center  of  population  west  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi; that  the  Scandinavian  and  German  element  occu- 
pies Wisconsin,  Minnesota  and  parts  of  upper  Iowa.  And 
the  American  —  where  is  he  ? 

Would  to  God  that  the  chameleon  record,  that  fatally 
accurate  census  map,  could  show  us  the  American  hue 
spreading  decade  after  decade,  and  not  these  other  colors  of 
the  map  of  America,  showing  the  extension  of  the  foreign- 
born  !  It  is  time  now,  old  as  we  are,  that  we  should  seek  a 
far  more  normal  balance  of  the  increase  of  our  foreign-bom. 

Something  is  wrong.  The  census  map  shows  that  it  is 
time  to  put  up  the  bars  at  Ellis  Island.  They  ought  to  go 
up  for  ten  years  at  least.  Twenty  —  thirty  —  lo!  Then 
this  would  be  America,  and  all  inside  our  gates  would  be 
Americans.  The  gates  ought  never  to  go  down  as  they  have 
in  the  past.  We  ought  to  pick  and  select  our  foreign-born 
population.  If  we  have  not  the  courage  to  do  that,  we 
are  lost. 

Give  us  a  generation  of  selected  immigration ;  deport  the 
un- Americans  who  divide  their  loyalty ;  revoke  the  naturali- 
zation of  every  man  interned  in  this  war  and  of  every  other 
disloyal  man,  —  every  adherent  to  the  law  of  violence  and 
destruction,  —  and  then,  and  then  only,  the  result  may  be 
an  American  population  and  a  real  America. 

The  best  possible  news  for  America  would  be  that  of  the 
deportation  of  more  than  300,000  false  and  foresworn  citi- 
zens who  have  acted  as  German  spies  in  America  during 
this  war.  Send  that  many  away  from  America,  and  those 
remaining  soon  would  learn  that  the  hyphen  must  go  for 
all  time.  If  not,  let  them  also  go.  We  do  not  need  Germans 
now.  The  world  is  done  with  Germans.  We  want  Amer- 
icans now. 

It  is  by  no  means  impossible  that  some  such  action  will 
be  taken  very  soon.  In  his  last  annual  report,  the  Attorney 
General  of  the  United  States  recommends  that  all  aliens 
who  were  interned  during  the  war  should  be  deported  and 
that  Congress  shall  pass  a  law  to  that  effect.  This  would 
deprive  us  at  once  of  a  select  society,  estimated  to  number 


460  THE  WEB 

from  3,000  to  6,000,  who  have  been  taking  their  ease  in 
their  inn  at  our  expense.  Banded  or  disbanded,  when  the 
American  Protective  League  says  that  law  must  be  passed, 
it  will  be  passed.  And  then  we  shall  begin  to  have  an 
America  and  not  a  mining  camp  with  open  doors.  Hunt  out 
Americans  for  your  leaders.  Vote  for  them.  Where  have 
'   we  ever  found  better  leaders? 

The  Department  of  Justice  officials  are  on  record  to  the 
effect  that  these  interned  aliens  should  not  be  left  in  this 
country  to  make  future  trouble  and  to  serve  actively  as 
German  agents.  They  were  often  trained  propagandists; 
men  involved  in  bomb  plots;  men  who  plotted  against  our 
shipping,  against  the  transportation  of  our  troops.  We 
have  no  law  by  which  we  can  punish  those  men  further. 
Are  they  good  citizens  to  retain?  Our  Department  of  Jus- 
tice thinks  not. 

Among  these  interned  prisoners  are  bank  presidents,  ex- 
porters and  importers,  college  professors,  merchants,  musi- 
cians, actors,  former  officers  of  the  German  army  and  navj^ 
and  merchant  marine.  Many  of  the  names  which  have  ap- 
peared in  the  testimony  of  the  Senate  Overman  Committee 
appear  also  on  the  internment  rolls.  There  are  consuls, 
officials  and  noblemen,  so-called,  who  also  have  been  in  our 
internment  camps.  Do  we  want  them  in  our  homes?  The 
Department  of  Justice  thinks  otherwise. 

Not  less  disloyal  than  these  greater  figures  are  thousands 
and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  minor  figures,  paid  or  unpaid 
propagandists  of  Germany  in  this  country  during  the  war, 
pro-Germans,  hyphenates,  silent  or  outspoken,  who  are  not 
Americans  at  all.  Do  we  want  them  in  our  citizenship  ?  If 
we  cannot  get  rid  of  them,  ought  we  to  import  any  more 
of  them? 

Already  Americans  stir  uneasily  under  the  revelations  of 
treachery  within  our  gates.  They  ask  of  themselves,  —  Since 
these  things  were  true  but  now,  what  guarantee  have  we  for 
the  future?  How  can  America  protect  herself  against  the 
future  treachery  of  so  large  an  element  of  her  population? 

The  answer  to  that  question  is  very  easy  for  bold  men. 
Let  us  clean  house.  If'^the  existing  broom  is  not  sufficient 
for  that,  let  us  make  another  broom.  The  revocation  of 
citizenship  for  acts  of  disloyalty  to  this  country  is  a  reme- 


THE  RECKONING  461 

dial  agency  which  will  be  applied  more  frequently  in  the 
future.  A  law  should  be,  and  probably  will  be,  placed  upon 
our  statute  books  which  will  hold  over  tl\e  head  of  every 
foreign-born  citizen  attaining  citizenship  in  this  country  a 
warning  that  he  must  come  into  this  court  with  clean  hands 
and  must  keep  his  hands  clean  forever  thereafter.  That  is 
to  say,  there  shall  be  no  more  an  absolute  patent  of  citizen- 
ship, nothing  irrevocable  any  more  in  the  citizenship  of  the 
foreign-born.  We  will  hold  a  first  mortgage  —  we  will  give 
him  no  deed.  Four  years  ago,  doctrine  like  this  would  have 
been  scouted.  Four  years  hence  it  will  be  accepted,  perhaps, 
as  the  truth;  indeed,  the  tendency  has  already" begun.  In 
eight  years  it  will  be  a  law.  In  twenty  years,  America  will 
be  a  nation,  and  the  strongest  on  the  globe. 

In  New  Jersey,  Frederick  Wiirsterbarth,  who  had  a  cer- 
tificate of  American  citizenship,  perjured  himself  and  re- 
mained true  to  his  foreign  birth.  He  declared  he  would  do 
nothing  to  help  defeat  Germany,  and  had  no  desire  to  see 
America  win.  He  would  not  contribute  to  the  Red  Cross  or 
to  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  He  added  the  old  hjT^henated  plea  that 
to  support  the  war  against  Germany  would  be  like  kicking 
his  mother  in  the  face.  The  Federal  courts  canceled  the  cer- 
tificate of  citizenship  of  Wiirsterbarth.  In  the  New  Jersey 
case,  the  judge  said  of  Wiirsterbarth:  "  Before  he  could 
be  admitted  to  citizenship,  he  must  declare  under  oath  that 
he  would  support  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  and 
entirely  renounce  and  abjure  all  allegiance  and  fidelity  to 
any  foreign  sovereignty.  Public  policy  requires  that  no  one 
shall  be  naturalized  except  he  exercise  the  utmost  good  faith 
in  all  the  essentials  required  of  him ;  and  where  the  govern- 
ment is  sho^vn  that  good  faith  in  any  of  the  essentials  is 
questionable,  the  burden  must  be  on  the  respondent  to  dispel 
that  doubt." 

In  addition  to  the  statute  which  shall  make  false  citizen- 
ship papers  revocable,  little  doubt  exists  that  we  also  shall 
have  a  law  requiring  the  immediate  deportation  of  any  for- 
eigner who  has  failed  to  take  out  his  second  naturalization 
papers  within  the  prescribed  time.  The  A.  P.  L.  investiga- 
tions during  this  war  uncovered  countless  cases  of  these 
pseudo-citizens.  Of  what  use  can  any  Monroe  doctrine  be 
to  America  if  it  is  our  constant  practice  to  nullify  that 


462  THE  WEB 

doctrine  and  stultify  ourselves  by  allowing  practical  coloni- 
zation? And  if  you  do  not  believe  that  we  have  foreign 
colonies,  study  your  census  map  and  the  history  of  the 
American  Protective  League. 

Is  it  bitter,  such  a  belief?  You  think  we  still  need  the 
German  language  in  the  United  States?  One  hundred  and 
forty-two  Illinois  schools  eliminated  the  study  of  German 
from  their  curriculums  during  the  last  year,  while  twenty 
schools  reduced  the  courses  offered  in  that  subject.  Ninety- 
six  schools  introduced  the  study  of  French  for  the  first  time 
and  twenty-one  schools  added  it  to  their  curriculum  in  that 
one  state. 

You  still  think  this  is  rabid?  Read  from  the  report  of 
the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  of  the  United  States. 

There  is  even  a  larger  problem  than  this  that  challenges 
our  attention,  and  that  is  the  teaching  of  the  English  tongue 
to  millions  of  our  population.  Dr.  John  H.  Finley,  president 
of  the  University  of  the  State  of  New  York,  in  a  recent  speech 
presented  this  picture  which  he  found  in  one  of  the  canton- 
ments : 

"How  practical  is  the  need  of  a  language  in  this  country 
common  to  all  tongues  is  illustrated  by  what  I  saw  in  one  of 
the  great  cantonments  a  few  nights  ago.  In  the  mess  hall, 
where  I  had  sat  an  hour  before  with  a  company  of  the  men 
of  the  National  Army,  a  few  small  groups  were  gathered  along 
the  tables  learning  English  under  the  tuition  of  some  of  their 
comrades,  one  of  whom  had  been  a  district  supervisor  in  a 
neighboring  State  and  another  a  theological  student.  In  one 
of  those  groups,  one  of  the  exercises  for  the  evening  consisted 
in  practicing  the  challenge  when  on  sentry  duty.  Each  pupil 
of  the  group  (there  were  four  of  Italian  and  two  of  Slavic 
birth)  shouldered  in  turn  the  long-handled  stove  shovel  and 
aimed  it  at  the  teacher,  who  ran  along  the  side  of  the  room, 
as  if  to  evade  the  guard.  The  pupil  called  out  in  broken 
speech,  'Halt!  who  goes  there?'  The  answer  came  from  the 
teacher,  'Friend.'  And  then,  in  as  yet  unintelligiNe  English 
(the  voices  of  innumerable  ancestors  struggling  in  their 
throats  to  pronounce  it),  the  words  'Advance  and  give  the 
countersign.'  So  are  those  of  confused  tongues  learning  to 
speak  the  language  of  the  land  they  have  been  summoned  to 
defend.  What  a  commentary  upon  our  educational  shortcom- 
ings that  in  the  days  of  peace  we  had  not  taught  these  men, 
who  have  been  here  long  enough  to  be  citizens   (and  tens  of 


THE  RECKONING  463 

thousands  of  their  brothers  with  them),  to  know  the  language 
in  which  our  history  and  laws  are  written  and  in  which  the 
commands  of  defense  must  now  be  given!  May  the  end  of  this 
decade,  though  so  near,  find  every  citizen  of  our  State  prepared 
to  challenge,  in  one  tongue  and  heart,  the  purposes  of  all  who 
come,  with  the  cry,  'Who  goes  there?' " 

Who  are  you,  new  man  at  Ellis  Island?  Are  you  a  de- 
mobilized German  soldier  looking  for  easy  money  in  Amer- 
ica? Let  us  see  your  hands.  Qui  vive!  Advance,  and  give 
the  countersign !    And  don 't  let  it  be  in  German. 

What  all  the  world  is  fearing  to-day  is  the  growth  of 
Bolshevism.  It  has  ruined  Russia  —  and  we  must  pay  for 
that;  it  is  blocking  the  peace  parliaments  in  Germany  — 
and  we  must  pay  for  that.  It  is  beginning  in  America  and 
may  grow  swiftly  in  the  turbulent  days  after  the  war  —  and 
we  shall  have  to  pay  for  that.  Nobody  knows  what  the 
Bolshevist  is  nor  what  are  the  tenets  of  Bolshevism  —  least  of 
all  the  Bolshevists  themselves.  They  have  recruited  their 
ranks  from  the  most  ignorant  and  most  reckless  —  from  the 
dregs  and  scum  of  the  world.  Their  theory  is  that  of  force ; 
of  government  they  have  nothing.  They  use  the  force  of 
law  without  any  surrender  of  privileges  to  the  law.  Their 
theory  of  life  is  self-contradictory.  None  the  less,  since 
they  cannot  be  reasoned  with,  they  constitute  a  menace  to 
any  country.  The  mischief  makers  of  all  classes  make  re- 
cruits for  Bolsheviki  —  socialists,  radical  I.  W.  W.  's,  anar- 
chists, the  red  flag  rabble  of  every  country  united  in  the 
general  ignorant  greed  of  the  wolf  pack. 

Bolshevism  may  come  to  America  through  the  Socialists, 
through  the  I.  W.  W.  or  through  the  Non-Partisan  League  — 
which  in  the  State  of  North  Dakota  to-day  hold  a  two-thirds 
majority  of  both  House  and  Senate.  It  will  grow  out  of  the 
ignorant  and  discontented  foreigners  unassimilated  in  this 
country.  We  must  expect  it  naturally  to  come  from  these 
and  from  the  pro-Germans  in  this  country,  because  those 
people  never  have  been  satisfied  with  what  we  did  in  the 
war.  In  general,  Bolshevism  lives  only  on  its  own  excite- 
ment, its  own  lack  of  plans,  its  own  eccentricities.  It  finds 
its  opportunity  in  any  time  of  unrest  and  of  slackened^ 
government 


464  THE  WEB 

We  have  troublesome  days  of  reconstruction  ahead  in 
America.  Food  prices  and  wages  cannot  go  up  forever, 
but  it  will  be  difficult  to  reduce  wages  and  food  prices.  We 
shall  have  unemployment  in  this  country.  We  shall  have 
soldiers  in  this  country  dissatisfied  because  they  find  them- 
selves and  their  deeds  so  soon  forgotten.  These  things  all 
are  among  the  menaces  of  America,  and  they  must  be  faced. 
It  will  require  a  united  America  to  face  them  successfully. 

Shall  we  import  more  such  problems,  or  shall  we  dispense 
with  certain  of  those  which  we  now  have?  Besides  all  this 
irresponsible  and  sporadic  Bolshevik  propaganda,  we  may 
count  upon  the  old,  steady,  undying,  well-conceived  and 
well-spread  propaganda  of  Germany  after  the  war  as  much 
as  before  and  during  the  war.  We  shall  meet —  indeed,  this 
very  day  are  meeting  —  propaganda  against  the  Allies  in- 
tended to  split  us  from  France  and  Great  Britain.  Ger- 
many is  going  out  after  her  lost  markets  all  over  the  world 
as  best  she  can.  She  will  need  all  of  her  propaganda  to 
help  her  crawl  back  even  into  a  place  in  the  shadows  of 
the  world  and  not  in  the  sun  of  the  world's  respect.  While 
the  war  was  going  on,  some  firm  in  America  bought  a  ship- 
load of  German  toys.  Who  wants  such  blood-reddened  toys 
in  his  home?  Soon  we  shall  see  German  goods  in  our  mar- 
kets. Who  wants  such  goods?  Soon  we  shall  hear  the 
subtle  commercial  scoff,  "It's  all  bosh  to  refuse  German 
goods,  for  they  are  better  and  cheaper."  Is  it  so?  Is  it 
our  duty  to  be  unsentimental  in  business?  Germany  was 
quite  unsentimental  when  she  tore  up  the  Belgian  scrap  of 
paper.  It  now  would  seem  to  be  time  that  we  had  some 
sentiment  of  the  old  sort.  Sentiment  rarely  is  fundamen- 
tally wrong.  So-called  common  sense  quite  often  is  no  more 
than  common  selfishness. 

As  these  pages  go  forward,  the  Allies'  declaration  is  that 
the  Hun  shall  not  be  allowed  in  the  peace  conference  nor 
in  any  League  of  Nations  whatever  that  may  be  drawn  up. 
One  thing  is  sure.  No  League  of  Nations  ever  will  be 
stronger  than  the  individual  thought  of  the  countries  com- 
bining. Our  League  of  Nations  will  be  no  stronger  than 
our  feelings  against  pro-Germanism.  If  we  forget  that,  and 
take  up  the  game  at  the  old  place,  our  League  of  Nations 
is  dead  at  its  birth. 


THE  RECKONING  465 

The  Department  of  Justice,  having  removed  restrictions 
on  enemy  aliens,  and  having  wiped  out  the  barred  zones 
and  the  necessity  of  passes  or  permits,  has  released  a  great 
many  pro-Germans  who  will  slip  back  into  their  old  places 
in  America.  In  Great  Britain  the  German  waiter  —  so  fre- 
quently the  German  spy  —  is  not  going  to  be  allowed  to  take 
his  old  place.  It  may  cause  some  inconvenience,  but  Great 
Britain  is  going  to  get  on  without  him.  That  is  what  we 
must  learn  in  America  —  to  get  on  without  some  of  the 
stolid  or  the  obsequious  labor  that  we  have  had.  With  the 
barring  of  alien  labor,  we  should  suffer  many  inconveniences 
in  our  personal  lives.  If  we  cannot  endure  those  in- 
conveniences, then  we  can  have  no  League  of  Nations.  With 
the  refusal  to  buy  any  article  made  in  Germany,  we  should 
be  letting  ourselves  in  for  a  considerable  individual  loss. 
Unless  we  are  willing  to  accept  that  loss,  we  can  have  neither 
a  League  of  Nations  nor  an  America  worthy  of  the  name. 

Germay  is  crippled,  but  not  beaten  and  not  repentant. 
The  Germans  regret  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  only  be- 
cause it  was  the  thing  which  brought  America  into  the  war. 
For  the  war  itself  they  are  not  sorry.  If  defeat  did  not 
make  them  repentant,  heavy  indemnities  may  help  teach  them 
something  of  their  real  place  in  the  world.  That  lesson  will 
be  all  the  stronger  if  we  in  America  shall  make  more  stringent 
importation  and  deportation  laws  —  if  we  shall  deport  more 
Germans  and  import  less  German  jroods.  There  is  many  and 
many  an  American  home  where  German  goods  never  again 
will  enter  the  doors. 

Prince  Carl,  of  the  House  of  Hohenzollern,  when  speaking 
of  the  war,  said  he  thought  that  Germany  ought  not  to  have 
started  her  submarine  warfare  ''without  being  absolutely 
sure  it  would  succeed."  He  said  he  regretted  the  German 
propaganda  in  the  United  States  —  because  it  had  been  car- 
ried out  so  clumsily;  he  said  that  Germany  ought  to  have 
started  her  propaganda  here  on  a  larger  scale,  and  ought 
to  have  spent  millions  of  marks  instead  of  thousands !  There 
you  see  the  German  idea  and  part  of  the  German  policy  in 
America.  They  have  learned  some  lessons,  but  not  the  great 
lesson  of  the  humble  and  the  contrite  heart. 

Maximilian  Harden  has  been  a  voice  crying  in  the  Hun 
wilderness  for  most  of  the  time  of  the  war.     He  says  that 


466  THE  WEB 

now  there  is  no  real  revulsion  of  feeling  against  the  men 
who  have  caused  Germany's  name  to  be  a  stench  in  the  nos- 
trils of  the  world.  The  soldiers  returning  from  the  front 
are  cheered  as  heroes,  though  their  hands  are  caked  with 
the  blood  of  innocent  women  and  children.  Not  one  of  the 
groups  scheming  for  advantage  at  Berlin  has  expressly 
repudiated  the  war.  Not  one  has  expressed  horror  at  the 
violation  of  treaties. 

Are  these  pages  indeed  bitter?  They  cannot  be  made  bit- 
ter enough!  We  cannot  sufficiently  amplify  and  intensify 
the  innate  American  horror  at  the  revealed  duplicity  of  this 
nation  which  we  have  fought  and  helped  to  beat.  We  find 
their  spirit  to  have  been  one  of  fiendish  ingenuity,  their 
intellect  of  that  curiously  perverted  quality  to  which  atten- 
tion has  been  called.  Germany  never  has  exulted  more  in 
the  success  of  her  armies  in  open  warfare  than  in  her  suc- 
cess at  stealth  and  treachery.  Are  these  the  men  we  wish 
to  see  marking  our  coming  census  maps  ? 

We  have  nothing  to  fear  from  Germany.  We  have  beaten 
the  Germans  at  every  game  they  have  produced,  and  we  can 
continue  to  do  so.  We  are  the  victors  and  they  are  the 
vanquished.  They  made  the  vast  mistake  of  being  beaten 
in  this  war.  There  is  no  reason  why  we  should  fear  them 
in  the  future,  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic.  Major  H.  C. 
Emory,  a  former  professor  at  Yale,  in  a  late  address,  rather 
colloquially  voiced  something  of  this  feeling  of  confidence 
in  his  own  country: 

Let  us  get  sane!  Get  over  this  German  bug  of  thinking 
that  somehow  or  other  the  Germans  are  superior.  Morally 
they  are  greatly  inferior,  but  people  have  thought  that  some- 
how, Intellectually  or  in  organization,  they  are  better  than 
the  rest  of  the  world.  We  have  sho^vn  them  that  we  can 
smash  the  German  military  organization,  which  we  have 
smashed.  There  is  an  idea  that  the  Germans  can  do  us  in 
business;  that  somehow  this  is  a  race  that  we  cannot  compete 
with  on  normally  fair  terms.  Put  that  out  of  your  head! 
They  are  a  patient,  hard-working  race;  they  will  work  four- 
teen hours  a  day  where  a  Russian  won't  work  four.  They 
will  plod  faithfully.  But,  gentlemen,  they  are  dumb;  they  are 
stupid.  They  do  not  understand  things.  They  do  not  get 
the  psychology  of  anybody  else;    and  a  large  part  of  their 


THE  RECKONING  467 

science  and  their  supposed  superior  way  of  doing  things  is  j 
bluff  and  fake.  They  have  done  some  good  work,  but  no 
better  work,  and  they  are  not  doing  better  work,  in  the  field  ] 
of  economics  than  the  English,  the  French,  and  the  Americans. 
In  the  field  of  business  they  have  nothing  on  you.  For  the 
love  of  Mike,  don't  be  afraid  of  them!  You  can  put  it  over 
them  every  time. 

We  need  not  fear  either  tlie  arms,  the  arts  or  the  artifices 
of  Germany.  What  we  need  to  fear,  really,  is  our  easy- 
going, unsuspicious  American  character,  our  tendency  to 
forget  everything  else  in  the  great  game  of  affairs.  It  is 
time  now  that  from  the  great  mass  of  the  American  people 
there  shall  appear  silently,  standing  shoulder  to  shoulder 
and  side  to  side  as  they  have  in  their  old  organization,  a 
new  American  Protective  League.  Our  old  League  deter- 
mined that  our  homes  and  our  property  should  be  saved. 
Let  the  new  League  determine  that  our  country  and  our 
principles  shall  be  saved.  All  the  eyes  of  the  world  turn 
to  America  to-day.  The  remainder  of  the  world  is  dis- 
tracted. In  Berlin,  radicals  coming  up  from  the  dregs  are 
doing  their  best  to  get  control  of  a  ruined  country.  ''Bis- 
marck's structure  was  wonderful  while  it  lasted,'*  says  an 
editorial  in  an  able  American  paper,  ''but  it  was  a  nation 
without  a  soul.  It  was  made  of  blood  and  iron,  and  it 
could  not  live  because  the  spirit  was  left  out."  Neither  can 
our  civilization  or  our  citizenship  live  if  they  are  made  of 
silver  and  gold,  and  if  the  spirit  be  left  out. 

It  is  time  to  look  at  the  census  map  of  America.  We  must 
revise  those  colors  in  the  next  ten  years,  or  we  have  lost  the 
war.  This  distrust  of  Germany  in  America,  in  South  Amer- 
ica and  in  Europe,  is  something  which  should  excite  no 
sympathy  and  no  pity  whatever.  Wars  are  not  cleared  up, 
for  example,  on  any  basis  of  sympathy.  There  is  no  use 
figuring:  what  we  can  do  to  show  Germany  how  sorry  we 
are.  The  thing  to  do  is  to  leave  Germany  sorry.  She  has 
coal,  iron,  timber,  copper,  potash,  phosphate,  abundant  other 
natural  resources.  If  she  cannot  handle  them,  others  can 
handle  them  for  her.  Marshal  Foch  has  threatened  re- 
peatedly that  if  Germany  continues  cynically  to  disregard 
the  terms  of  the  armistice,  he  will  march  again  on  Ger- 


468  THE  WEB 

many.  That  is  hard  doctrine  ?  Yes.  But  it  was  Germany 
that  lost  the  war. 

It  is  altogether  likely  that  not  the  best  writing  in  the 
world,  not  the  most  partisan  history  in  the  world,  will  ever 
be  able  to  give  a  clean  bill  of  health  to  America's  conduct 
of  this  war,  or  to  restore  the  old  American  confidence  that 
we  were  the  one  great  people  of  the  world.  The  scales  have 
fallen  from  the  eyes  at  least  of  our  soldiers.  They  know, 
and  presently  all  the  world  will  know,  our  shortcomings. 
Three  million  men  will  have  something  to  say  about  the 
politics  of  this  country.  Perhaps  they  wdll  say  that  our 
next  war  shall  not  find  us  so  unprepared.  Perhaps  they 
will  say  that  our  next  war  shall  not  fimd  us  with  an  army 
of  2,000,000  spies,  propagandists  and  pro-enemies  who  claim 
American  citizenship.  The  Army  man  is  the  worst  foe  of 
the  censorship  which  has  held  back  the  truth  from  America 
for  so  long.  Perhaps  the  Army  man  w^ill  be  able  to  settle 
accounts  Avith  that  politician  whose  stock  in  trade  is  the 
holding  back  from  the  American  people  of  the  knowledge  of 
themselves.  It  is  time  to  raise  the  real  banner  of  America. 
It  will  take  courage  to  march  under  those  colors.  But  if 
we  cannot  march  side  by  side  and  shoulder  to  shoulder,  then 
we  have  lost  this  war,  w^e  have  lost  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  we 
have  lost  the  League  of  Nations. 

Why  should  we  try  to  avoid  the  truth  ?  Nothing  is  gained 
by  that.  The  truth  is  that  the  reckoning  of  this  war  is  not 
yet  paid.  Eventually  it  must  be  paid  through  the  resolu- 
tion and  individual  courage  of  those  citizens  who  are  not 
ashamed  to  be  called  American.  Ostracism  of  the  hyphen, 
where  it  is  known  still  to  exist;  fearlessness  in  the  boycott 
of  blood-soaked  German  goods;  rejection  of  the  blood-soaked 
German  hand;  the  wiping  out  of  the  foreign  languages  in 
the  pulpit  and  press  of  America;  the  revocation  of  citizen- 
ship based  on  a  lie ;  the  deportation  of  known  traitors  — 
those  are  some  of  the  things  which  must  go  into  the  oath  of 
the  next  A.  P.  L.  Until  we  can  swear  that  oath  and  main- 
tain it,  we  have  lost  the  war. 

It  is  a  far  cry  enough.  We  have  not  shot  one  German 
spy  out  of  those  thousands  whom  we  have  found  working 
here  in  America.  We  have  not  deported  one  man.  We  have 
revoked  the  citizenship  of  only  two  men  —  the  above  men- 


THE  RECKONING  46t) 

tioned  Fred  Wiirsterbarth,  who  had  been  a  citizen  of  Amer- 
ica for  thirty  years,  and  Carl  August  Darmer,  of  Tacoma, 
"Washington,  who  had  been  a  citizen  in  America  for  thirty- 
six  years.  Do  you  think  these  tAvo  men  were  any  worse 
than  a  one  hundred  thousand  others  who  worked  as  spies  of 
Germany?  Hardly.  The  war  remains  still  to  be  fought 
against  these  men  who  still  are  Under  arms.  Apply  this 
test  to  your  friends  and  associates  —  to  your  lawyer,  your 
doctor,  to  your  grocer,  above  all,  to  your  alderman,  your 
councilman,  your  mayor  and  your  representatives  in  Con- 
gress. Why  not  ?  It  is  only  the  same  test  which  the  United 
States  District  Court  in  New  Jersey  applied  to  Wiirsterbarth. 
Eight  years  ago  an  American  minister  of  the  gospel  who 
had  lived  much  abroad,  especially  in  Germany,  came  back 
to  this  country  and  wrote  a  book  which  perhaps  never  was 
very  popular.  He  held  up  the  mirror  of  America  to  her- 
self. His  views  to-day  would  not  be  so  much  that  of  one 
crying  in  the  wilderness.  Let  us  follow  along,  in  a  running 
synopsis  of  the  pages  of  his  book,  a  hint  now  and  then  from 
page  to  page,  and  see  what  one  man  thought  in  that  long 
ago  before  war  was  dreamed  of;  before  the  German  army 
of  spies,  military  and  industrial,  had  been  unearthed;  before 
the  plans  of  Germany  for  world  conquest  had  been  divulged. 
That  writer  says : 

In  fifty  years  New  York  will  be  what  the  Italians  make  it. 
.  .  .  In  New  York  there  is  only  one  native  American  to 
twenty  foreigners.  Waterbury,  Connecticut,  has  a  population 
of  30,000,  20,000  being  aliens.  .  .  .  New  Haven  and  Hart- 
ford, cities  of  long-established  colleges,  have  an  un-Araerican 
population  which  in  ten  years  will  outnumber  the  natives. 
.  .  .  Parts  of  New  Jersey  are  more  hopelessly  de-Ameri- 
canized than  New  England.  Perth  Amboy  has  at  least  three 
to  one  non-Americans.  Cincinnati  and  Milwaukee  have  been 
German  cities  for  a  quarter  of  a  century;  Chicago  hardly  less 
so.  .  .  .  Wherever  I  take  a  meal  I  am  served  solely  by 
foreigners.  ...  It  seems  odd  that  I  should  seldom  ever 
see  or  meet  Americans  except  in  a  social  or  professional  way, 
and  the  professions  are  being  rapidly  filled  by  men  of  foreign 
names.  .  .  .  The  Yankee  no  longer  counts  in  the  industrial 
and  commercial  life  of  New  England.  In  his  place  is  to  be 
found  the  Italians,  Hungarians,  French,  Polocks,  Scandina- 
vians and  Jews.     .     .     .     Thoroughness,  therefore,  must  now 


470  -  THE  WEB 

be  the  watchword  of  the  native  American  if  he  hopes  to  sur- 
vive in  the  terrific  commercial  battle  now  waging  all  over 
the  world.  .  .  .  This  sort  of  thing  must  be  stopped  at 
once  or  we  are  lost.  .  .  .  Take  the  half-past-seven  Sunday 
morning  train  from  the  New  York  Grand  Central  station,  and 
you  will  see  at  every  way-station  a  swarm  of  dark,  sturdy 
foreigners  entering  or  quitting  the  train  at  the  little  towns 
along  the  way  —  for  this  is  a  local  train  and  makes  all  the 
stops  —  and  these  people  are  thus  enabled  to  visit  their  friends 
and  acquaintances.  And  there  appears  to  be  no  town,  however 
small,  where  these  foreigners  have  not  gained  some  footing  as 
laborers,  farmers  and  small  tradesmen.  I  should  say  that  more 
than  half  of  the  Sunday  railroad  trafiic  in  New  York,  New 
Jersey  and  New  England  is  foreign.  I  took  a  train  from 
New  York  some  thirty  miles  into  New  Jersey  one  Sunday 
morning  in  October  and  the  conductor  told  me  that  he  did 
not  think  the  native  Americans  constituted  ten  per  cent  of 
his  passengers.  I  asked  him  whether  that  was  the  usual  thing 
on  Sundays,  and  he  said,  "No,  not  quite  so  bad  as  to-day, 
but  we  always  have  more  foreigners  than  natives  on 
Sunday."     .     .     . 

Six  millions  of  aliens  are  necessary,  we  are  told,  to  the 
development  of  the  resources  of  our  country.  Now,  it  is  per- 
fectly plain  that  these  foreign  hordes  are  necessary  to  the 
development  of  the  multi-millionaires,  the  trusts  and  the 
monopolies;  but  it  is  not  so  plain  that  they  are  necessary  to 
the  peace,  happiness  and  prosperity  of  this  country.  .  ,  . 
The  normal  increase  of  the  native  American  population  in 
the  last  forty  years  would  have  been  amply  sufficient  for  the 
proper  and  healthy  development  of  this  country.  Had  not  the 
foreigner  been  called  in  in  such  hordes,  we  should  have  been 
forced  to  do  our  own  work  ourselves  and  would  have  been  all 
the  happier  and  richer  for  it.  .  .  .  There  must  be  a  check 
put  upon  immigration.  Self-preservation  Is  the  first"  law  of 
nature,  and  the  time  has  come  when  we  must  resort  to  it. 
.  .  .  We  need  time  to  train  our  children  to  compete  with 
these  people  and  during  that  time  the  foreigner  must  be  held 
at  bay.  Immigration  must  be  checked.  The  resources  of  this 
land  are  being  too  rapidly  developed  by  means  of  these 
aliens.  .  .  .  Some  radical  change  for  the  worse  has  taken 
place  in  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  in  the  fibre  of  our  life, 
our  manhood  and  our  national  character.  .  .  .  Indiscrimi- 
nate and  immoderate  immigration  is,  I  believe,  the  main  cause 
of  this  deterioration.  We  have  ceased  long  since  to  assimilate 
the   vast   hordes   of   heterogeneous    peoples    who    have    been 


THE  RECKONING  471 

dumped  down  upon  our  shores  and  who  swarm  all  over  this 
land  in  the  eager  pursuit  of  the  mere  physical  necessities  of 
life.  This  is  the  object,  the  sole  ambition  of  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  out  of  every  thousand.  Such  an  invasion  is 
actually  as  disastrous  to  a  country  as  the  invasion  of  Germany 
by  the  Huns  who  were  impelled  solely  by  hunger  (the  very 
same  motive  that  brings  the  vast  majority  of  immigrants  to 
this  country)  and  whose  ravages  devastated  the  whole  of 
Germany  and  scattered  its  inhabitants  beyond  the  Alps  to 
the  Rhine  and  to  the  borders  of  the  Mediterranean.  .  .  . 
Such  masses  of  crude  humanity  as  pour  in  upon  us  cannot 
possibly  be  taken  up  into  healthy  circulation,  but  must  lie 
undigested  in  the  stomach  of  the  nation,  seriously  affecting  its 
health  and  happiness.  .  .  .  The  curse  these  immigrants 
bring  upon  themselves  is  plainly  to  be  seen,  for  it  is  immediate. 
They  form  a  body  incompatible  with  the  healthy  growth  of 
this  country.  The  greater  curse  of  this  country  is  that  they 
do  the  work  that  should  not  be  done  by  them  at  all,  the  work 
that  should  be  done  by  natives.  They  take  the  work  and  the 
bread  out  of  the  hands  and  mouths  of  native  Americans,  and 
the  question  of  their  means  of  living  must  soon  become  one 
of  the  most  pressing  economic  and  social  problems  of  the  day. 

Such  extended  quotations  are  made  from  one  writer  (Mr. 
Monroe  Royce;  "The  Passing  of  the  American")  only  be- 
cause these  truths  of  ten  years  ago  are  equally  true  to-day 
and  more  true.  In  the  past  ten  years  our  census  map  has 
changed  yet  more.  And  now  into  this  crude  population  of 
ours  we  have  inducted  all  the  seeds  of  discord  of  this  war. 
We  have  learned  a  sudden  distrust  of  a  large  number  of 
our  citizenry.  Our  returning  soldiers  will  bring  us  yet  more 
problems.  The  spirit  of  unrest  in  this  hour  of  anarchy  will 
add  to  all  these  problems. 

It  is  time  for  another  oath,  sworn  indeed  for  the  protection 
of  America. 


AT  THE  PEACE  TABLE 

Who  shall  sit  at  the  table,  then,  when  the  terms  of  peace  are 

made  — 
The  wisest  men  of  the  troubled  lands  in  their  silver  and  gold 

brocade  ? 
Yes,  they  shall  gather  in  solemn  state  to  speak  for  each  living 

race, 
But  who  shall  speak  for  the  unseen  dead  that  shall  come  to 

the  council  place? 

Though  you  see  them  not  and  you  hear  them  not,  they  shall 

sit  at  the  table,  too ; 
They  shall  throng  the  room  where  the  peace  is  made  and 

know  what  it  is  you  do; 
The  innocent  dead  from  the  sea  shall  rise  to  stand  at  the 

'  wise  man's  side, 
And  over  his  shoulder  a  boy  shall  look  —  a  boy  that  was 

crucified. 

You  may  guard  the  doors  of  that  council  hall  with  barriers 

strong  and  stout. 
But  the  dead  unbidden  shall  enter  there,  and  never  you'll 

shut  them  out. 
And  the  man  that  died  in  the  open  boat,  and  the  babes  that 

suffered  worse, 
Shall  sit  at  the  table  when  peace  is  made  by  the  side  of  a 

martj^red  nurse. 

You  may  see  them  not,  but  they'll  all  be  there;  when  they 

speak  you  may  fail  to  hear; 
You  may  think  that  you're  making  your  pacts  alone,  but 

their  spirits  will  hover  near; 
And  whatever  the  terms  of  the  peace  you  make  with  the 

tyrant  whose  hands  are  red. 
You  must  please  not  only  the  living  here,  but  must  satisfy 

your  dead. 

— Edgar  A.  Guest. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PEACE  TABLE  f 

The  Price  of  Peace  —  The  First  Days  After  the  Armistice 
—  Ferocious  Treachery  of  Germany  in  this  Country  —  The 
Test  of  the  Citizen  —  The  New  America, 

To  the  merely  morbid  mind,  the  white  faces  of  the  starved, 
the  moans  of  the  maimed,  the  black  habiliments  of  those 
who  mourn,  may  be  thought  parts  of  a  drama  whose  terrible 
appeal  has  found  no  counterpart  in  the  human  emotions. 
For  the  average  man,  soon  to  settle  back  to  the  grim  struggle 
of  making  his  living,  perhaps  even  these  scenes  will  fade,  the 
world  turning  from  them  because  the  world  can  endure  no 
more.  But  someone  must  make  the  peace,  must  bind  up  the 
wounds.  Someone  must  point  out  the  future  to  the  stagger- 
ing peoples,  dizzy  from  their  hurts.  And  it  is  not  alone 
Europe  which  has  a  future  to  outline.  Our  own  history  is 
not  yet  written ;  our  own  problems  lie  before  us  still. 

What  shall  a  just  peace  be  ?  If  it  must  be  tempered  with 
mercy,  to  whom  shall  we  show  mercy  —  to  the  foe  whom  we 
have  beaten,  or  the  coming  generation  of  Americans  whom 
that  foe  has  done  all  he  could  to  betray  and  ruin?  Shall 
we  fight  this  war  through  now  until  it  actually  is  done ;  or 
shall  we  face  an  indeterminate  future,  with  possible  further 
yet  bloodier  and  more  appalling  wars? 

Now  the  dead  arise  and  demand  their  justice.  The  world 
leans  over  the  rail  of  the  arena,  cold-faced,  thumbs  down, 
pitiless  of  the  armed  bully  who  lies  vanquished  and  whimper- 
ing. A  race  which  would  fight  as  Germany  has  fought,  and 
for  such  reasons,  will  fight  again  when  possible.  Such  a  race 
understands  nothing  but  force.  Mercy  is  mistaken  with  a 
people  which  knows  not  the  meaning  of  mercy.  Britain  has 
a  huge  war  bill  against  Germany;  that  of  Prance  is  larger 
still.  What  of  our  own  bill?  And  what  of  the  total  of  all 
these  sums,  added  to  that  which  the  war  has  cost  Germany 

473 


474  THE  WEB 

herself?  If  the  Germans  should  be  serfs  for  centuries,  they 
could  not  pay  the  reckoning  in  silver  and  gold  alone.  But 
that  is  not  the  great  question.  What  of  the  silent  dead, 
demanding  also  their  due  before  Almighty  God? 

Germany  never  can  pay  her  bill.  So  long  as  her  language 
is  spoken,  it  will  be  the  tongue  of  a  debtor  race  whose  ac- 
count never  Avill  be  paid  and  never  can  be.  And  why  should 
the  world  forgive  that  debt  or  that  debtor,  even  should  it 
find  it  impossible  to  collect  the  debt.  What  outlaws  such  a 
debt  in  the  just  belief  of  the  world?  Shall  continued  ar- 
rogance and  treachery  serve  to  outlaw  that  unpaid  debt? 
Shall  a  continuance  in  America  of  the  old  German  ways  in 
America  serve  to  outlaw  her  awful  and  eternally  unpaid 
debt? 

Why  does  such  feeling  as  this  exist  in  the  minds  of  the 
most  chivalrous  of  foes  against  whom  Germany  ever  fought  ? 
Why  should  America  and  France  and  Britain  feel  an  im- 
placable hatred  against  a  helpless  enemy?  In  other  wars 
the  sign  of  submission  has  arrested  the  wrath  of  warriors. 
But  not  in  this  war.  The  world  looks  on  beaten  Germany 
to-day  with  cold  scorn  and  with  no  feeling  of  relenting.  It 
is  the  way  that  she  fought  —  it  is  the  spying  that  she  did, 
the  brutality  that  she  showed,  which  has  awakened  the  ice- 
cold  wrath  of  the  world  to-day.  That  wrath  means  to  exact 
its  pound  of  flesh  from  the  heart  of  Germany  itself.  What 
of  the  dead  who  died  unfairly?  What  of  the  innocent  and 
the  unarmed  dead?  Only  in  her  own  tears  of  blood  could 
Germany  learn  the  humble  and  the  contrite  heart.  She  has 
not  yet  learned  her  lesson.  It  must  be  taught  her  for  a 
century  yet  and  more. 

More  and  more  as  the  facts  shall  come  from  Europe,  un- 
covering the  real  Germany,  showing  her  ferocious  treachery 
all  over  the  world,  her  utter  insensibility  to  any  feeling  of 
responsibility,  her  abysmal  ignorance  of  such  a  term  as 
honor,  shall  we  be  ready  to  make  fair  conclusions ;  for  these 
must  be  our  only  premises. 

It  is  only  those  who  really  know  Germany's  methods  in 
America  —  those  who  know  her  treachery,  her  duplicity,  her 
efforts  to  undermine  our  country  —  who  can  make  up  a  fair 
.iudgment  as  to  how  Germany  should  be  treated  in  the 
future. 


THE  PEACE  TABLE  475 

The  members  of  the  A.  P.  L.  have  drawn  aside  the  masks 
and  found  hundreds  of  thousands  of  two-faced  "citizens" 
amenable  to  no  sense  of  honor  and  fair  play,  hating  the  flag 
they  have  sworn  to  honor.  America  does  not  need  those 
people.  America  needs  only  the  facts  about  them.  The 
judgment  thereon  will  be  written  in  the  next  two  genera- 
tions of  American  history. 

The  plea  of  Germany  for  food,  after  the  Armistice  was 
only  part  of  her  old  propaganda.  Her  attempts  to  split 
this  country  away  from  the  Allies  is  now  carried  on  only 
as  a  part  of  her  old  systematic  propaganda.  It  behooves 
us  to  be  well  aware  of  such  methods,  since  we  once  have 
known  them.  Germany  will  not  be  allowed  at  the  peace 
table.  She  will  not  be  allowed  in  the  League  of  Nations. 
Why?  Because  she  has  lost  the  right  to  shake  the  hand  of 
honorable  soldiers.     How  about  honorable  citizens? 

There  is  not  so  much  bitterness  as  cold  and  relentless 
reason  in  all  such  statements.  But  you  may  get  a  trace  of 
bitterness  from  the  press  of  Europe,  suffering  as  Europe 
has  all  these  years  under  the  ruthlessness  of  German  war. 
There  is  indeed  ''every  reason  for  belief  that  other  pledges 
would  be  as  treacherously  shattered  did  not  the  victors  con- 
trol the  only  agency  which  Germany  understands  —  sheer 
material  force.  There  can  be  no  compassion  based  on  any 
code  of  sound  morality  for  people  so  despicable  as  to  snivel 
for  help  in  the  midst  of  an  orgy  of  cowardly  iniquity.  Ger- 
many in  this  last  and  most  loathsome  of  her  ugly  roles  should 
excite  about  as  much  legitimate  sympathy  as  a  hungry 
snake. ' ' 

The  murders  of  Liebknecht  and  of  Rosa  Luxemburg  have 
excited  certain  strange  comment  in  the  German  press. 
'*  What  will  the  world  think  of  us?  "  asks  the  German 
paper  Yorwaerts,  *'  if  we  commit  murders  such  as  this?  " 

That  certainly  is  a  purely  German  question  !  It  is  a  trifle 
academic.  What  in  Germany  is  the  murder  of  one  woman 
or  one  man?  The  seventh  of  May,  1915,  was  proclaimed  a 
national  holiday  in  Germany.  On  the  seventh  of  May  in 
1916,  1917,  1918,  the  German  people  closed  their  shops  and 
their  factories,  and  in  holiday  attire  paraded  the  streets  to 
celebrate  that  glorious  German  victory  when  a  submarine 
sank  an  unarmed  vessel  and  murdered  more  than  a  thousand 


476  THE  WEB 

persons,  many  of  them  women  and  children.  And  now  Ger- 
many asks  what  the  world  will  think  of  her  for  killing  one 
or  two  of  her  own  people! 

The  whole  truth  will  never  be  known,  but  more  than 
100,000  citizens  of  Belgium  and  France  were  put  to  death 
on  various  pretexts ;  thousands  of  women  made  the  sport  of 
violent  beasts  who  wore  the  Kaiser 's  uniform ;  thousands  of 
little  children  maimed  and  tortured  and  every  conceivable 
barbarity  and  infamy  committed  upon  them.  And  yet  Ger- 
many apologizes  for  killing  two  more  persons!  And  Dr. 
Dernburg  counts  upon  the  future  friendhip  of  America! 

It  must  be  the  just  men  and  brave  men  of  America  who 
shall  constitute  the  court  to  determine  the  treatment  of  the 
foreign  element  in  America.  All  of  those  men  within  our 
gates  who  retain  their  sympathy  for  Germany  are  enemies 
of  this  country  after  the  war  as  much  as  they  were  during 
the  war.  They  must  share  then  in  the  defeat  of  Germany 
and  must  pay  the  losses  of  the  loser.  The  victor  decides. 
We  are  the  victors.  Let  the  foreign  element  reflect  on  that 
—  we  are  the  victors,  not  they,  in  this  fight  which  they 
elected.  It  is  only  the  man  who  makes  the  dollar  his  Ten 
Commandments  who  will  feel  toward  Germany  in  America 
after  the  war  as  he  did  before. 

What  we  Americans  need  is  not  so  much  a  League  of 
Nations  as  a  League  of  Americans.  The  soul  of  the  Ameri- 
can Protective  League  —  renamed,  reehristened  and  recon- 
secrated—  must  go  marching  on  even  though  the  League 
be  disbanded,  its  unseen  banner  floating  no  more  over  a 
definite  organization.  As  citizens  we  must  unite  in  a  com- 
mon purpose,  or  the  v,  ar  will  have  been  lost  for  us  no  matter 
what  shall  be  the  treaty  at  Versailles.  If  we  open  our  hearts 
and  homes  again  to  the  former  traitors  at  our  own  table, 
then  we  have  lost  this  war.  It  is  of  little  consequence  what 
is  done  with  the  Kaiser  —  he  is  too  pitiable  a  figure  to  be  • 
able  to  pay  much,  even  with  his  life.  But  Kaiserism  in 
America,  still  growing,  still  reaching  out  in  the  old  ways  — 
that  is  a  different  thing.  We  were  leagued  against  that 
once,  and  must  be  leagued  against  it  forever. 

It  is  accurate  enough  to  say  that  this  war  was  no  lofty 
thing  in  any  phase.  It  was  much  like  any  other  war,  based 
on  the  biological  impulse  of  nations  to  go  to  war  almost 


THE  PEACE  TABLE  477 

rhythmically,  almost  periodically.  Commercial  jealousy 
brought  out  the  war,  and  that  it  was  "  forced  on  "  Ger- 
many was  never  anything  but  a  pitiable  lie.  Germany 
wanted  to  control  the  Suez  Canal,  to  enlarge  her  possessions 
in  East  Africa,  to  obtain  the  rich  Indian  possessions  of 
Great  Britain.  All  this  was  to  follow  her  defeat  of  Eng- 
land and  Prance,  her  absorption  of  Belgium,  Denmark  and 
Holland,  her  consolidation  of  ^Middle  Europe,  her  subjection 
of  the  mujik  population  of  Russia,  already  suborned  and 
bought  and  beaten  by  German  propaganda.  It  was  indeed 
a  grandiose  scheme  of  world  conquest.  Nothing  that  Alex- 
ander planned  could  have  paralleled  it.     But  it  failed ! 

In  our  own  country,  we  of  the  A.  P.  L.  have  seen  treason 
weighed  and  bought  like  soap  or  sugar,  and  the  price  was 
ready  in  German  gold,  no  matter  how  high.  Our  morale  was 
continuously  assailed.  Through  our  colleges,  our  schools, 
our  churches,  Germany  always  intended  to  undermine  Amer- 
ica and  to  break  down  her  patriotism.  On  the  list  of  men 
of  intellect  whom  Germany  had  bought,  there  are,  besides 
a  long  list  of  college  professors,  fifty  other  names,  including 
judges,  editors,  priests,  men  of  large  affairs.  The  German 
satyrs  of  diplomacy  juggled  huge  figures  carelessly  in  a 
cold-blooded  commerce  which  dwelt  in  hearts  and  souls  and 
honor.  That  was  done  merely  in  the  hope  to  divide  and 
conquer  the  United  States,  all  in  good  time.  German-Amer- 
ican citizens?  "Why,  no.  Why  use  even  that  hyphen?  If 
they  were  not  Americans  during  the  war,  they  are  not 
Americans  now.  They  are  no  more  demobilized  than  Ger- 
many's army  is  demobilized.  Their  hearts  are  no  more 
changed  than  the  heart  of  Germany  has  changed.  If  they 
were  not  at  one  time  above  prostituting  the  most  sacred 
offices  in  the  world,  they  are  not  above  that  now. 

Let  the  dead  speak  at  the  peace  table !  Let  them  tell  of 
the  simplicity  and  worthiness  of  the  German  character,  the 
German  *'love  of  liberty."  We  are  often  told  about  Ger- 
many's part  in  our  Civil  War.  We  are  not  fighting  that 
war  now  —  we  are  fighting  this  war.  We  are  asked  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  German  rulers  and  the  German  people ; 
but  the  obvious  truth  was  that  Germany  was  more  united 
for  this  war  than  we  were  united  for  it,  more  than  Great 
Britain  or  Prance  was  united  for  it.     She  planned  it  as  the 


478  THE  WEB 

exact  working  out  of  a  business  system  —  she  made  it  her 
industry,  her  ambition,  her  business  enterprise  for  this  gen- 
eration. Is  such  an  ambition  as  this  stifled  forever  in  her 
soul,  on  either  side  the  Atlantic?  Let  us  not  be  too  easy 
and  too  foolish.  We  are  just  beginning  to  learn  about  our 
own  citizenship.  If  Germany  struck  medals  to  commemorate 
its  gallant  dead,  each  dead  man  of  ours  at  the  peace  table 
ought  to  bear  that  medal  in  his  hand  which  would  serve  as 
proof  of  Germany's  oneness  with  her  Kaiser  in  this  war! 

In  these  merciful  and  liberty-loving  terms  a  German 
apostle  of  ' '  kultur  ' '  writes : 

Let  us  bravely  organize  great  forced  migrations  of  the 
inferior  peoples.  Let  them  be  driven  into  "reserves,"  where 
they  have  no  room  to  grow  .  .  .  and  where,  discouraged 
and  rendered  indifferent  to  the  future  by  the  spectacle  of  the 
superior  energy  of  their  conquerors,  they  may  crawl  slowly 
toward  the  peaceful  death  of  weary  and  hopeless  senility. 

Superior  energy!  Thrift!  Efficiency!  Let  dead  lips  at 
the  peace  table  spell  out  those  words.  We  remember  the 
Alamo.  We  remember  the  Maine.  Shall  we  forget  the 
Liisitania  f 

That  statesmanship  is  not  acceptable  American  states- 
manship which  plans  mercy  for  such  a  people,  or  which 
tolerates  the  thought  of  unsafely  letting  in  more  of  that 
breed  within  our  country's  gates.  It  is  a  false  and  weak 
statesmanship  to  mince  matters  in  days  like  these.  Had 
Germany's  war  been  fought  out  honestly  by  soldiers  in 
uniform  only,  against  soldiers  in  uniform,  in  accordance 
with  the  customs  among  warriors,  then  that  war  might  one 
day  be  forgotten.  But  Belgium  and  France,  plus  von  Bern- 
storff  and  von  Papen  and  Scheele  —  No,  no,  and  again,  No ! 
We  Americans  can  not  forget. 

The  propaganda  campaign  is  beginning  again  here,  now, 
in  America,  even  in  the  existing  confusion  of  our  industries, 
in  the  hurrying  of  our  own  plans  for  demobilization.  We 
shall  soon  hear  stories  intended  to  make  us  believe  that 
France  robbed  us  commercially,  that  Britain  does  not  love 
us  and  only  used  us.  Can  you  not  hear  now  the  German 
song:  **  The  war  is  over  now.  We  are  at  peace.  Let  us 
forget.     Kamerad!  " 


THE  PEACE  TABLE  4.79 

But  we  are  not  at  peace.  Our  dead  stand  at  the  table 
with  all  those  other  gallant  dead,  to  demand  their  hearing 
through  all  time.  We  must  be  done  with  foresworn  citizen- 
ship in  America.  We  could  forgive  a  soldier;  but  we  can- 
not forgive  a  naturalized  German  who  foreswore  himself 
when  he  took  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  our  country.  That 
treachery  is  one  thing  which  must  go  —  that  is  one  thing 
which  shall  never  be  forgotten  or  forgiven  in  America. 
Such  men  as  these  lost  their  war.  There  is  no  injustice,  no 
unfairness  in  any  of  these  words,  which  sound  so  harsh. 
They  set  lightly  on  the  innocent,  heavily  on  those  who  have 
guilt  in  their  hearts. 

It  is  for  every  man  of  foreign  blood  to  know  his  own 
heart  —  we  cannot  know  his  heart  for  him.  He  alone  knows 
whether  he  is  German  or  American.  He  knows  which  he 
wants  to  be.  We  know  that  he  cannot  be  both.  That  is  the 
one  test  —  the  impossibility  of  a  man  being  both  a  good 
German  and  a  good  American.  Let  him  choose.  Let  him 
read  his  own  heart.  And  let  him  remember  that  he  is  not 
the  victor  but  the  vanquished  in  this  war. 

One  great  American  —  I  fancy  even  his  enemies  will 
allow  him  that  title  now  —  wrote  as  his  final  message  to 
America  the  real  answer  to  this  war  as  it  applies  to  us  in 
America.  Colonel  Roosevelt's  last  plea  was  for  American- 
ism. It  was  read  at  an  Ail-American  Benefit  Concert  by  a 
trustee  of  the  society,  because  of  the  Colonel's  indisposition: 

I  cannot  be  with  you,  and  so  all  I  can  do  Is  wish  you 
Godspeed.  There  must  be  no  sagging  back  in  the  fight  for 
Americanism  merely  because  the  war  is  over.  There  are 
plenty  of  persons  who  have  already  made  the  assertion  that 
they  believe  the  American  people  have  a  short  memory,  and 
that  they  intend  to  revive  all  the  foreign  associations  which 
most  directly  interfere  with  the  complete  Americanization  of 
our  people. 

Our  principle  in  this  matter  should  be  absolutely  simple. 
In  the  first  place,  we  should  insist  that  if  the  immigrant,  who 
comes  here  in  good  faith,  becomes  an  American  and  assimilates 
himself  to  us,  he  shall  be  treated  on  an  exact  equality  with 
everyone  else,  for  it  is  an  outrage  to  discriminate  against  any 
such  man  because  of  creed,  or  birthplace  or  origin. 

But  this  is  predicated  upon  the  man's  becoming  in  fact  an 
American  and  nothing  tut  an  American.     If  he  tries  to  keep 


480  THE  WEB 

segregated  with  men  of  his  own  origin,  and  separated  from 
the  rest  of  America,  then  he  isn't  doing  his  part  as  an 
American. 

There  can  be  no  divided  allegiance  here.  Any  man  who 
says  he  is  an  American,  but  something  else  also,  isn't  an 
American  at  all.  We  have  room  for  but  one  flag,  the  Ameri- 
can flag,  and  this  excludes  the  red  flag,  which  symbolizes  all 
wars  against  liberty  and  civilization,  Just  as  much  as  it  ex- 
cludes any  flag  of  a  nation  to  which  we  are  hostile. 

To  that  doctrine,  and  to  that  alone,  can  the  dead  at  the 
peace  table  nod  their  voiceless  assent.  By  that  doctrine 
only,  continually  kept  alive,  continually  enforced,  can  their 
deaths  ever  be  justified  and  made  glorious  indeed.  Under 
that  doctrine  and  for  that  purpose,  we,  who  have  our  war 
to  fight  out  here  in  America  for  a  generation  and  more,  can 
continue  the  battle,  knowing  that  it  is  for  a  good  cause,  and 
knowing  that  we  shall  win. 

The  old  oath  of  the  American  Protective  League  exists  no 
more.  The  silent  army  has  disbanded.  But  now  it  remains 
the  privilege  of  each  of  those  men,  and  their  sons  and  broth- 
ers, to  enlist  again  in  a  yet  greater  army,  and  to  swear  a 
yet  greater  oath,  each  for  himself,  at  his  own  bedside, 
gravely  and  solemnly : 

THIS  is  my  country.  I  Jiave  no  otJier  country.  I  swear 
to  he  loyal  to  Iter  always,  to  protect  lier  and  to  defend  Tier 
always,  and  in  all  ways.  In  my  heart  tJiis  is  the  truth,  the 
whole  truth,  and  nothing  hut  the  truth.     So  help  me  God! 

THE   END 


APPENDICES 


APPENDIX  A 

HISTORICAL  STATEMENT  OF  HINTON  G.  CLABAUGH, 
DIVISION  SUPERINTENDENT,  U.   S.  BUREAU 
OF  INVESTIGATION 

Shortly  after  the  severance  of  diplomatic  relations  between  the 
United  States  and  Germany  on  February  1,  1917,  Mr.  A,  M.  Briggs, 
then  vice-president  of  a  poster  advertising  company  of  New  York, 
Chicago  and  elsewhere,  whom  I  had  met  in  connection  with  sev- 
eral official  investigations,  called  at  the  office  of  the  Bureau  of 
Investigation,  and  made  substantially  the  following  statement: 
"Diplomatic  relations  have  been  severed  and  in  all  probability 
this  country  will  be  drawn  into  the  European  war.  I  am  physically 
unable  to  join  the  active  fighting  forces,  but  I  would  like  to  help 
in  some  way,  and  it  has  occurred  to  me  that  a  volunteer  organiza- 
tion might  be  of  great  assistance  to  an  investigating  bureau  such 
as  the  one  with  which  you  are  connected.  I  hereby  pledge  all 
my  time  and  all  my  resources.  I  am  not  a  man  of  much  wealth, 
but  the  Government  is  welcome  to  every  dollar  I  possess,  as  well 
as  my  time,  and  I  earnestly  hope  that  if  you  can  think  of  any  way 
in  which  I  can  be  of  assistance  to  this  Bureau  you  will  com- 
mand me." 

In  the  meantime  I  had  a  conference  with  the  late  Herman  F. 
Schuettler,  then  General  Superintendent  of  Police  of  Chicago,  and 
attended  a  meeting  of  prominent  citizens  of  this  community  in 
the  Federal  Building. 

Subsequently,  or  a  few  days  after  the  first  conversation,  I  told 
Mr.  Briggs  I  had  been  thinking  about  his  idea  and  believed  that 
an  organization  of  volunteers  would  be  of  very  great  help  to  the 
Department,  and  as  a  first  step  in  connection  with  such  organiza- 
tion we  could  use  some.automobiles,  which  would  enable  the  agents 
to  cover  several  times  as  much  territory,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
time  thus  saved,  but  that  there  was  no  appropriation  from  which 
the  Government  could  pay  for  the  upkeep  of  such  cars.  I  also 
explained  to  him  the  substance  of  some  telegrams  which  I  had 
exchanged  on  the  subject  with  Mr.  A.  Bruce  Bielaski,  Chief  of  the 
Bureau  of  Investigation  at  Washington. 

483 


484  THE  WEB 

Mr.  Brlggs  on  February  26th  tendered  the  Chicago  office  three 
good  cars,  and  offered  to  furnish  a  car,  or  cars,  for  the  New  York 
and  Washington  offices,  as  per  iny  telegram  to  the  Chief  of  the 
Bureau,  dated  February  27,  1917. 

On  February  27,  1917,  I  wrote  the  following  letter  to  Mr.  Bie- 
laski,  Chief  of  the  Bureau: 

"This  letter  will  introduce  to  you  Mr.  A.  M.  Briggs,  concerning 
whora  I  have  already  telegraphed  and  written  you.  Please  be 
sure  to  have  Mr.  Briggs  meet  Mr.  Wrisley  Brown,  Mr.  Horn  and 
Mr.  Pike;  and  I  should  also  like  to  have  him  meet  Mr.  Suter  if 
he  is  in." 

The  Mr.  Wrisley  Brown  referred  to  was  Special  Assistant  to 
the  Attorney  General,  and  is  now  Major  Wrisley  Brown  of  the 
Military  Intelligence  Division.  Mr.  Raymond  Horn,  Mr.  A.  H. 
Pike  and  Mr.  John  Gardner  were  assistants  to  the  Chief  of  the 
Bureau.    Mr,  Suter  was  Private  Secretary  to  the  Attorney  General. 

On  February  28,  Mr.  Bielaski  sent  me  the  following  telegram: 

Department  Justice,  Washington. 

"Hinton  G.  Clabaugh, 
Bureau  of  Investigation,  Chicago. 

"Wire  immediately  whether  acceptance  offer  automobiles  would 
be  used  as  advertisement  in  any  way.  Believe  Congress  opposed 
any  advertisement  feature.     Bielaski." 

On  February  28,  1917,  I  wired  Mr.  Bielaski  as  follows: 

"A.  B.  Bielaski, 
Department  Justice,  Washington. 

"Telegram  received.  Offer  of  four  automobiles  for  Chicago,  four 
for  New  York,  three  for  Washington,  referred  to  in  telegram,  not 
intended  in  any  way  as  advertisement.  In  fact,  specifically  stated 
to  contrary.    Clabaugh." 

Mr.  Briggs  also  tendered  a  gift  of  fifty  to  seventy-five  automo- 
biles, to  be  divided  up  among  the  various  offices  of  the  Bureau,  in 
the  principal  cities,  where  they  could  be  used  to  best  advantage, 
without  any  cost  to  the  Government  whatsoever,  as  per  my  letter 
to  the  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  February  27,  1917. 

On  March  14,  1917,  I  sent  a  personal  letter  to  Mr.  Bielaski, 
Chief  of  the  Bureau,  enclosing  a  letter  addressed  to  me  by  Mr. 
Briggs  under  date  of  March  14,  a  copy  of  which  I  have  and  which 
is  as  follows: 

"Hinton  G.  Clabaugh, 
Bureau  of  Investigation,  Chicago. 

"My  dear  Mr.  Clabaugh: 

"Believing  that  the  Department  of  Justice  is  at  this  time  in  need 


APPENDIX  A  485 

of  possible  assistance  in  their  work  and  that  a  volunteer  organiza- 
tion, properly  built  and  controlled,  could  render  valuable  and 
efficient  service,  I  beg  to  submit  the  following  for  your  con- 
sideration: 

Its  Purpose:  A  volunteer  organization  to  aid  the  Bureau  of 
Investigation  of  the  Department  of  Justice. 

The  Object:  To  work  with  and  under  the  direction  of  the  Chief 
of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation,  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  or 
such  attorney,  or  persons  as  he  may  direct,  rendering  such  service 
as  may  be  required  from  time  to  time. 

Membership:  This  organization  is  to  be  composed  of  citizens 
of  good  moral  character  who  shall  volunteer  their  services  and 
who  are  acceptable  to  your  Department. 

Construction:  It  is  proposed  that  national  headquarters  be 
established  either  in  Washington,  or  perhaps  Chicago,  because  of 
its  geographical  location,  and  that  branch  organizations  be  estab- 
lished in  such  cities  as  your  Department  may  direct. 

Finances:  It  is  proposed  that  headquarters  organization  and 
branch  organizations  shall  finance  themselves  either  by  outside 
subscriptions  or  by  its  members. 

Control:  It  is  proposed  that  each  unit  of  this  organization  shall 
be  under  the  control  of  the  Government  but  will  report  to  and  be 
under  the  direction  of  the  nearest  Department  of  Justice  head- 
quarters. 

Trusting  you  will  give  the  foregoing  your  consideration, 

(Signed)     A.  M.  Briggs." 

On  March  19,  1917,  Mr.  Bielaski  telegraphed  me  as  follows: 

"Hinton  G.  Clabaugh, 
Bureau  of  Investigation,  Chicago. 

"Replying  your  letter  fourteenth  Briggs  should  be  encouraged  in 
organization  volunteer  association.  Be  glad  talk  with  him  about 
matter.     Letter  follows.     Bielaski." 

Mr.  Bielaski  confirmed  his  telegram  by  letter  under  date  of 
March  20th,  which  reads  in  part  as  follows: 

"Hinton  G.  Clabaugh,  Chicago. 

"In  reply  to  your  letter  of  the  14th,  with  respect  to  letter  ad- 
dressed to  you  by  Mr.  A.  M.  Briggs  of  Chicago  under  date  of  14th, 
I  beg  to  advise  you  that  this  Department  is  encouraging  the 
organization  of  volunteer  associations  to  aid  the  Government  in 
securing  information  as  to  the  activities  of  foreign  Governments 
or  unfriendly  aliens. 

"In  the  pressure  of  business  your  desire  for  an  immediate  answer 
was  overlooked,  but  I  have  just  telegraphed  you  the  gist  of  this 


486  THE  WEB 

letter.  This  organization  should  be  handled  as  confidentially  as 
practicable,  and  care  taken  that  nothing  is  done  by  it  to  unneces- 
sarily alarm  aliens  in  this  country  or  cause  them  any  apprehen- 
sion as  to  the  fair  manner  in  which  they  will  be  treated,  and  no 
arrests  should  be  caused,  except  after  consultation  with  the  federal 
authorities,  in  order  that  there  may  be  no  confusion. 

"I  will  take  no  further  action  in  this  matter  until  I  hear  from 
Mr.  Briggs  or  yourself." 

On  March  20,  I  telegraphed  Mr.  Briggs  as  follows: 

"A.  M.  Briggs, 
Hotel  Claridge,  New  York  City. 

"Just  received  following  telegram  from  Chief  Bielaski:  'Reply- 
ing your  letter  14th,  Briggs  should  be  encouraged  in  organization 
volunteer  association.  Be  glad  talk  with  him  about  matter.  Letter 
follows.'  Personally,  foregoing  makes  me  very  happy,  as  it  does  you, 
I  am  sure.  Please  wire  what  day  you  will  confer  with  Chief. 
Clabaugh." 

On  March  20,  I  received  the  following  telegram,  dated  New 
York,  from  Mr.  Briggs: 

"Hinton  G.  Clabaugh, 
Bureau  of  Investigation,  Chicago. 

"Great  news.  Will  see  Chief  Washington  Thursday  morning 
nine  thirty.     Please  arrange  appointment.     Briggs." 

I  then  wired  the  Chief  of  the  Bureau,  and  on  March  22,  Mr. 
Briggs  wired  me  from  Washington  as  follows: 

"Hinton  G.  Clabaugh, 
Bureau  of  Investigation,  Chicago. 

"Very  satisfactory  interview.  Chief  has  approved.  Organization, 
our  original  plan,  to  be  formed  immediately.  See  you  Saturday. 
Briggs." 

Thus  It  was  that  Chicago  was  the  first  city  in  the  United  States 
to  have  such  an  organization.  It  was  the  idea  of  Mr.  A.  M. 
Briggs,  and  of  no  one  else.  Although  in  public  speeches,  letters 
and  upon  other  occasions  he  has  been  generous  enough  to  credit 
the  idea  to  me,  I  want  it  positively  understood  that  the  whole 
scheme  was  his  thought,  and  it  is  due  to  his  untiring  energy  and 
sacrifice  that  the  organization  was  started  and  put  on  its  feet 
during  the  early  period  of  its  history,  when  many  people  were 
inclined  to  look  upon  It  and  ridicule  it  as  "a  bunch  of  volunteer 
detectives,  etc."  Mr.  Briggs  personally  defrayed  all  expenses  in 
the  early  history  of  the  organization.  National  headquarters  were 
here  in  the  Peoples  Gas  Building  and  the  Chicago  Division  was 


APPENDIX  A  487 

formed  as  well.  Thomas  B.  Crockett  was  Assistant  Chief  of  the 
national  organization  prior  to  the  time,  or  until  the  time,  he  was 
made  a  Major  in  the  Army,  and  assigned  to  the  Intelligence 
Branch,  Central  Department. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  handled 
all  complaints  of  violations  of  so-called  federal  war  laws,  the 
enforcement  of  which  were  not  specifically  charged  to  other  depart- 
ments or  bureaus  by  statute.  In  time,  however,  the  military  au- 
thorities established  a  bureau  of  Military  Intelligence,  and  the  Navy 
established  in  Chicago  the  Aid  for  Information  and  Naval  Intelli- 
gence Bureau. 

Under  the  direction  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation,  a  War 
Board  was  formed,  consisting  of  representatives  of  the  following 
Investigating  Bureaus: 

Chairman:  Hinton  G.  Clabaugh,  Division  Superintendent,  Bu- 
reau of  Investigation,  Department  of  Justice. 

Colonel  Carl  Reichmann,  former  Military  Intelligence  OflEicer, 
Central  Department,  War  Department. 

Major  T.  B.  Crockett,  Military  Intelligence  Officer. 

Lieutenant  Edwin  L.  Reed,  Aide  for  Information,  9th,  10th  and 
11th  Naval  Districts. 

Lieutenant  Commander  Clive  Runnells,  Naval  Intelligence 
Officer. 

General  James  E.  Stuart,  Post  Office  Inspector  in  Charge. 

Colonel  L.  G.  Nutt,  Supervising  Agent,  Internal  Revenue. 

H.  R.  Landis,  Inspector  in  Charge  Immigration  Service. 

John  J.  Bradley,  U.  S.  Marshal. 

Charles  Howe  Bradley,  Special  Agent  in  Charge,  Treasury 
Department. 

Davis  S.  Groh,  Special  Agent  in  Charge,  Plant  Protection  Divi- 
sion, War  Department. 

John  H.  Winterbothani,  Chairman,  Chicago  Division,  American 
Protective  League. 

Robert  A.  Gunn,  Chief,  Chicago  Division,  American  Protective 
League. 

John  H.  Alcock,  former  Acting  General  Superintendent  of  Police. 

John  J.  Garrity,  General  Superintendent  of  Police. 

Morgan  Collins,  former  First  Deputy,  Superintendent  of  Police. 

By  degrees  the  League,  through  the  Bureau,  tendered  its  services 
to  these  several  branches. 

In  this  necessarily  brief  and  naked  sketch  of  the  early  days  of 
the  American  Protective  League,  I  ought  to  add  just  a  word  or  so 
regarding  the  composition  and  the  purposes  of  this  War  Board. 
I  called  a  meeting  of  the  heads  of  the  various  federal  investigation 
bureaus  of  the  several  departments  of  the  Government,  having  to 


488  THE  WEB 

do  with  investigation  involving  the  detection  and  prosecution  of 
crime  under  Federal  laws,  and  the  general  superintendent  of 
police,  who  represents  the  local  authorities.  The  purpose  of  this 
meeting  of  the  committee  was  to  discuss  various  matters  relating 
to  individual  bureaus,  with  the  idea  of  coordinating  the  work 
and  to  have  maximum  efficiency  with  minimum  confusion  and 
expense,  and  thus  to  avoid  unnecessary  duplication  of  work.  A 
committee  representing  two  or  three  departments  was  appointed, 
which  met  almost  daily  for  many  months.  This  conuuittee  was  of 
invaluable  assistance.  It  kept  the  various  heads  of  bureaus  work- 
ing together  in  harmonious  cooperation,  and  many  constructive 
ideas  were  put  into  effect. 

Chief  Thomas  I.  Porter,  Operator  in  charge  of  the  Secret  Service 
Division,  Treasury  Department,  nominated  me  for  Chairman.  The 
nomination  was  seconded  by  Colonel  Carl  Reichmann,  Military 
Intelligence  Oflacer,  and  unanimously  approved,  although  I  favored 
the  selection  of  one  of  the  older  men.  Captain  Charles  Daniel 
Frey,  later  of  the  Military  Intelligence  Division  at  Washington, 
and  one  of  the  National  Directors,  attended  the  first  meeting,  and 
was  selected  secretary  of  the  committee. 

The  Chicago  Bureau,  assisted  ty  the  American  Protective  League, 
has  conducted  some  of  the  most  important  investigations  in  the. 
country.  It  is  my  judgment  that  the  convictions  under  war  latcs 
in  the  Chicago  district  will  equal  that  of  any  three  cities  in  the 
country.  While  comparisons  are  odious,  I  am  referring  to  the 
record  as  a  m<itter  of  pride  rather  than  egotism. 

Topping  the  list  with  the  famous  I.  W.  W.  trial,  as  late  as 
May,  1917,  it  was  believed  that  the  I.  W.  W.  situation  was  one 
which  should  be  handled  by  the  state  authorities,  but  their  activi- 
ties and  the  history  of  the  organization  were  such  that  the  Govern- 
ment undertook  to  follow  it  up  officially  shortly  after  that  time, 

I  was  placed  in  charge  of  the  investigation  at  Chicago.  A  branch 
bureau  was  established  in  the  McCormick  Building,  and  assisted 
by  a  number  of  Special  Agents,  we  worked  there  continuously, 
not  coming  near  the  Federal  Building  for  eight  or  ten  weeks,  until 
on  September  5,  1917,  the  Government,  through  search  warrant 
process  under  the  Espionage  Act,  raided  I.  W.  W.  headquarters 
in  approximately  one  hundred  different  places  throughout  the 
country  simultaneously.  The  prosecution  was  in  charge  of  Special 
Assistants  to  the  Attorney  General,  Frank  K.  Nebeker,  Frank  C. 
Dailey  and  Claude  R.  Porter,  as  well  as  Oliver  E.  Pagan,  Indict- 
ment Expert  and  Special  Assistant  to  the  Attorney  General,  and 
U.  S.  District  Attorney  Charles  F.  Clyne. 

Indictments  were  subsequently  returned.  A  trial,  lasting  a 
number  of  months,  was  had,  which  resulted  in  convicting  about 


APPENDIX  A  4S9 

one  hundred,  or  practically  all  of  the  active  leaders  of  the  I.  W.  W. 
movement,  ninety-seven  of  whom  were  sentenced  by  Federal  Judge 
Landis  and  are  now  serving  sentences  in  Leavenworth  Federal 
Penitentiary.  Cases  are  pending,  as  this  is  being  written,  against 
other  leaders  of  the  I.  W.  W.  in  Sacramento,  Kansas  City,  Omaha 
and  elsewhere. 

In  connection  with  the  preparation  of  the  evidence  at  Chicago, 
I  take  this  occasion  to  commend  most  highly  the  efficient,  untiring 
assistance  of  Special  Agent  George  N.  Murdock,  of  the  Indianapolis 
office,  who  was  assigned  to  Chicago  and  relieved  me  of  the  investi- 
gating detail  work  in  December,  1917,  and  he  continued  to  assist 
those  in  charge  of  the  case  throughout  the  trial.  Mr.  Murdock  is 
still  Special  Agent  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  in  active  charge 
of  the  investigating  work  at  Sacramento,  Kansas  City,  Omaha  and 
elsewhere. 

The  Bureau  of  Investigation  and  the  American  Protective  League 
are  very  greatly  indebted  to  the  late  Herman  F.  Schuettler,  then 
General  Superintendent  of  Police  of  Chicago,  for  his  competency 
and  very  great  assistance  personally,  also  his  entire  Police  Depart- 
ment, in  helping  make  the  American  Protective  League  a  success 
in  Chicago.  The  same  is  true  of  John  H.  Alcock,  former  Acting 
General  Superintendent  of  Police,  Morgan  Collins,  First  Deputy 
Superintendent  of  Police,  and  other  officials  of  the  Police  Depart- 
ment. 

I  shall  therefore  not  burden  this  memorandum  except  to  call 
attention  to  the  famous  Rockford  draft  cases,  which  resulted  in 
the  conviction  of  about  one  hundred  persons.  (Rockford  is  the 
entry-point  for  Camp  Grant  Cantonment.) 

After  war  had  been  declared  and  during  the  discussion  in  Con- 
gress of  the  Draft  Act,  the  I.  W.  W.  members  and  their  sympa- 
thizers carried  on  an  active  campaign  against  the  Act,  and  when 
the  Act  was  passed,  simply  advised  their  members  not  to  register. 
They  were  particularly  active  in  the  Chicago  Division,  as  well 
as  around  Rockford.  To  insure  carrying  out  their  plans  at  Rock- 
ford, an  all-day  meeting  and  picnic  was  announced  for  June  5  at 
Blackhawk  Park  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  their  members  and 
sympathizers  together  until  after  the  close  of  the  registration 
booths  in  order  to  prevent  their  registration. 

On  June  6,  1917,  Wait  Talcott,  Chief  of  the  American  Protective 
League  at  Rockford,  presented  the  facts  to  me  and  he  was  directed 
to  request  the  local  authorities  in  Rockford  to  take  steps  to  appre- 
hend all  those  who  had  not  registered.  Late  in  the  afternoon 
three  were  apprehended  and  locked  up  in  the  county  jail.  This 
act  enraged  the  leaders  of  the  I.  W.  W.  Meetings  were  held, 
demanding  the  release  of  the  persons  in  custody.     Upon  adjourn- 


490  THE  WEB 

ment  of  the  meetings  the  members  marched  in  a  body  through 
the  principal  streets  of  Rockford  to  the  jail,  about  a  mile  and  a 
quarter  away,  and  a  demand  was  made  to  release  the  prisoners. 
Upon  the  Sheriff's  refusal  to  do  so,  the  mob  incited  a  riot,  as  a 
result  of  which,  arrests  were  made  of  the  leaders  and  persons 
known  to  be  in  sympathy  with  the  I.  W.  W.  and  placed  in  jail. 
About  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  arrests  were  made.  At  the  time 
standing  room  only  was  available  in  the  jail.  Sheriff  Guy  Ginders 
of  Rockford  arranged  with  the  Sheriffs  of  Boone  and  Stevenson 
Counties  to  accept  some  of  the  prisoners.  With  this  end  in  view 
special  interurban  cars  were  chartered.  Thirty-five  were  taken  to 
Boone  County,  forty-five  to  Stevenson  County,  and  about  thirty 
remained  in  the  Rockford  city  jail.  Before  the  transfers  were 
made  all  the  glass  in  the  windows  of  the  jail  was  broken  and  most 
of  the  plumbing  wrecked.  The  leader,  James  Cully,  was  indicted 
by  the  Federal  Grand  Jury,  tried  in  the  federal  court,  found  guilty, 
and  sentenced  to  Leavenworth  Penitentiary.  A  majority  of  the 
balance  were  indicted  by  the  federal  grand  jury  for  failure  to 
register,  and  about  107  were  sentenced  to  a  maximum  of  one  year 
in  the  Bridewell  at  Chicago. 

This  case,  together  icith  the  I.  W.  W.  case  at  Chicago,  makes 
a  total  of  212  defendants  convicted  in  two  cases  —  a  record,  I 
telieve,  in  the  Federal  Courts  of  this  country.  The  American 
Protective  League  aided  the  Department  in  both  of  these  important 
cases. 

As  I  understand  it,  "The  Web"  will  be  a  history  of  the  League 
as  an  organization  rather  than  a  work  referring  to  any  individuals 
connected  with  it,  but,  nevertheless,  I  desire  to  say  that  in  addi- 
tion to  Mr.  A.  M.  Briggs,  both  Captain  Charles  Daniel  Frey  and 
Mr.  Victor  Elting,  who  later  became  National  Directors  at  Wash- 
ington, but  who  were  Chief  and  Assistant  Chief  respectively  of 
the  Chicago  Division  in  its  early  days,  deserve  the  highest  pos- 
sible praise  for  the  work  done  by  them  and  the  sacrifices  they 
made  in  putting  the  League  on  its  feet.  Mr.  Robert  A.  Gunn, 
formerly  Assistant  Chief,  later  Chief  of  the  Chicago  Division,  is 
also  entitled  to  highest  possible  praise  for  his  untiring  devotion 
to  the  service.  Mr.  John  H.  Winterbotham,  Chairman  of  the 
Board  of  Governors  at  Chicago,  who  was  one  of  the  first  mem- 
bers of  the  League,  and  who  aided  it  in  its  financial  development 
and  other  work,  besides  traveling  through  a  number  of  cities  in 
the  middle  west,  appointing  local  chiefs  of  the  League,  etc.,  has 
done  as  much  as  any  other  man  to  perpetuate  and  make  the 
Iveague  a  success.  The  League  will  never  be  able  to  repay  Mr. 
John  F.  Gilchrist,  its  Chief  for  many  months  during  a  very  trying 
period,  for  his  able  leadership  and  devotion  to  the  work.     He  was 


APPENDIX  A  ,  491 

ever  available,  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night,  and  with  his 
assistants  is  entitled  to  the  credit  for  making  the  Chicago  Division 
what  it  is. 

Without  exaggeration,  I  think  the  Chicago  Division  of  the 
American  Protective  League  did  seventy-five  percent  of  the  Gov- 
ernment investigating  work  throughout  the  war.  It  seems  to  me 
tliat  this  one  sentence  coveis  the  situation. 

VThen  Captain  Charles  Daniel  Frey  was  Chief  of  the  Chicago 
Division,  there  was  never  a  more  active,  energetic  worker,  and 
while  I  am  not  personally  familiar  with  his  work  at  Washington, 
I  feel  sure  it  was  in  keeping  with  what  I  know  he  did  at  Chicago. 

In  addition  to  working  for  all  Government  bureaus,  and  helping 
in  thousands  of  investigations,  the  League  conducted  a  famous  so- 
called  "Slacker  Drive"  in  Chicago  during  the  period  July  11  to  15, 
inclusive,  1918,  and  apprehended,  or  caused  to  go  to  the  local 
boards  to  straighten  out  their  records,  40,167  delinquents.  The 
total  number  of  deserters  and  delinquents  apprehended  during 
the  period  of  the  war,  or  taken  to  the  local  boards  and  inducted 
into  the  service,  or  permitted  to  file  their  questionnaire,  or  register, 
totaled  approximately  67,000.  Not  one  word  of  criticism  was  heard 
of  the  Chicago  raid.  During  the  four  days,  approximately  200,000 
persons  between  the  ages  of  21  and  31  were  questioned.  Hotels, 
caf^s,  saloons,  baseball  parks,  moving-picture  theatres,  railroad 
depots,  and  other  places  where  people  are  wont  to  congregate, 
were  visited  systematically  and  simultaneously  throughout  the 
district.  A  few  who  were  unnecessarily  detained,  or  believed  they 
should  not  have  been  detained,  instead  of  filing  a  protest,  con- 
gratulated the  Department  and  stated  that  their  slight  incon- 
venience was  nothing  to  compare  with  the  duty  they  owed  to  the 
community  in  aiding  the  authorities  in  apprehending  those  who 
had  not  complied  with  the  law.  The  press,  throughout  the  period 
of  the  war,  aided  the  League  and  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  in 
every  possible  way. 

In  addition  to  the  automobile  service  rendered  free  of  charge 
to  the  Government  by  the  American  Protective  League,  there  grew 
out  of  this  idea  an  organization  known  as  the  Emergency  Drivers 
of  Chicago,  composed  exclusively  of  women  who  devoted  their 
entire  time  and  machines,  without  cost  to  the  Government,  to 
driving  the  agents  around  this  vicinity.  They  maintained,  from 
the  beginning  of  the  war  down  to  the  present  time,  an  office  In 
the  Rookery  Building,  and  furnished  this  Bureau  with  an  average 
of  fifteen  to  twenty  automobiles  per  day.  Mrs.  Frederick  D. 
Countiss,  whose  husband,  Mr.  Frederick  D.  Countiss,  was  also 
active  in  the  American  Protective  League  work,  was  responsible 
for  this  organization,  and  subsequently  Miss  Florence  Spofford 
was   Chairman   of  the   Chicago   Division.     The   organization   was 


492  THE  WEB 

afterward  taken  over  by  the  American  Red  Cross,  and  is  now 
known  as  the  American  Red  Cross  Automobile  Drivers,  although, 
because  of  the  manner  in  which  it  originated,  it  has  always 
maintained  an  independent  branch  in  the  Rookery  Building,  over 
which  Miss  Spofford  presided  and  which  continued  to  furnish 
assistance  to  this  Bureau.  Personally,  I  doubt  whether  there  is 
a  single  member  of  the  American  Protective  League  or  emergency 
driver  who  appreciates  just  how  much  this  volunteer  assistance 
has  meant  to  the  Government  during  the  war, 

(Signed)     HINTON  G.  CLABAUGH 

Chicago,  December  15,  1978. 


\ 


APPENDIX  B 

CONFIDENTIAL    CONSTITUTION    OF    THE    AMERICAN    PRO- 
TECTIVE  LEAGUE   AS   FIRST  OUTLINED   TO   MEMBERS 

Executive  control  of  the  organization  is  centered  in  a  Board 
of  National  Directors  operating  from  National  Headquarters  at 
Washington,  D.  C,  in  cooperation  with  the  Department  of  Justice, 
and  through  it  with  other  departments  and  agencies  of  the  Gov- 
ernment; this  Board  being  established  to  coordinate  the  activities 
of  the  local  branches  throughout  the  country. 

Divisional  headquarters  are  established  in  the  various  States 
to  coordinate  the  work  of  local  branches  operating  throughout 
the  divisional  territory;  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  work  of  each; 
to  promote  their  efficiency  and  to  render  them  practical  assistance; 
and  to  establish  and  maintain  ready  communication  with  Agents 
in  Charge  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  of  the  United  States 
Department  of  Justice;   and  to  develop  methods  of  operation. 

The  work  of  the  American  Protective  League  in  the  field  is  per- 
formed through  the  local  branches.  The  Chief  of  the  I^cal  Branch 
is  appointed,  and  is  subject  to  removal,  by  the  Board  of  National 
Directors.  He  is  the  directing  head  of  the  organization  and  re- 
sponsible therefor.  He  will  appoint  an  Assistant  Chief;  and,  in 
his  discretion,  an  Advisory  Committee. 

Members  of  the  organization  must  be  American  citizens  of  legal 
age,  of  good  character  and  absolute  loyalty,  who  undertake  to 
serve  from  patriotic  motives  and  without  compensation.  The  re- 
ward of  a  member  is  the  opportunity  to  serve  the  Government  in 
a  responsible  way  in  matters  of  grave  importance.  The  selection 
of  members  is  a  most  important  duty  devolving  upon  the  Chief, 
both  because  the  future  efficiency  of  the  Local  Branch  is  dependent 
upon  its  personnel,  and  because  of  the  potential  danger  involved 
in  mistakes  in  enrollment.  The  interest  of  the  Government  and 
the  ability  of  the  candidate  to  render  efficient  service  are  the  first 
considerations  and  are  paramount  to  any  considerations  of  busi- 
ness, family  or  friendship. 

Every  member  of  the  organization  must  subscribe  and  swear 
to  the  formal  oath  before  enrollment.  This  rule  will  be  rigidly 
enforced  and  no   member  will   be  recognized  as  such   until   this 

493 


494  THE  WEB 

action  has  been  taken.  The  candidate  will  be  sworn  in  before  an 
oflacer  qualified  to  administer  oaths. 

Strict  observance  by  members  of  the  rules  and  regulations  of 
the  organization  is  required.  The  Government  must  not  be  embar- 
rassed by  unauthorized  action  of  members  in  the  attempted  per- 
formance of  their  duties.  Experience  has  demonstrated  the  value 
of  a  Trial  Board  consisting  of  disinterested  and  responsible  mem- 
bers of  sound  and  unprejudiced  judgment. 

The  Bureau  of  Finance  procures  the  funds  necessary  for  the 
work  of  the  organization  from  voluntary  contribution  of  citizens, 
and  has  charge  of  all  expenditures.  It  is  important  that  an  ac- 
curate system  of  requisition  and  voucher  be  installed  and  that  all 
contributions  be  strictly  accounted  for.  Periodic  audits  should  be 
made  at  regular  intervals.  No  volunteer  member  of  the  League 
should  be  allowed  to  profit  through  his  service. 

Local  Branches  should  not  derive  their  revenue  from  any  single 
person  or  interest,  but  should  secure  them  from  various  sources 
so  that  no  individual  or  business  interest  shall  at  any  time  be  in 
a  position  to  dictate  as  to  the  personnel,  policy  or  activity  of  the 
Local  Branch.  Great  care  should  be  exercised  that  no  alien  enemy, 
or  person  in  sympathy  with  the  cause  of  the  enemy,  be  allowed  to 
contribute  money  and  thereby  discredit  the  organization.  Expe- 
rience has  shown  that  through  appreciation  of  the  protection  af- 
forded the  community  by  a  competent  local  organization,  adequate 
funds  may  readily  be  secured  from  responsible  citizens.  Each 
Local  Branch  is  self-supporting,  and  will  be  requested  to  make 
its  proportionate  contribution  toward  defraying  the  expenses  of 
the  National  and  Divisional  Headquarters.  The  efficient  operation 
of  these  Headquarters,  and  their  usefulness  to  the  Local  Branches, 
require  adequate  quarters,  equipment  and  clerical  assistance;  and 
involve  large  expense  for  printing  and  distribution  of  bulletins  of 
instruction  and  other  literature. 

The  Bureau  of  Law  maintains  an  adequate  corps  of  competent 
lawyers.  It  advises  operatives  upon  all  matters  relating  to  their 
work,  including  questions  of  right  and  authority,  the  competency 
of  evidence,  etc.  It  assigns  individual  attorneys  to  direct  par- 
ticular investigations,  and  gives  advice  as  to  the  construction  of 
laws.  It  revises  the  reports  of  operatives,  and  briefs  the  same 
for  submission  to  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  of  the  Department 
of  Justice.  In  large  and  thickly  populated  communities  a  zone  or 
district  system  of  organization  has  proven  most  effective,  members 
being  assigned  according  to  their  residence.  Under  this  plan  the 
territory  is  divided  into  inspection  districts,  each  under  the  com- 
mand of  an  inspector.  Each  inspection  district  is  in  turn  sub- 
divided into  convenient  territorial  units,  each  under  the  direction 
of  a  captain.     Under  each  captain  is  a  company  consisting  of  the 


APPENDIX  B  495 

requisite  number  of  platoons,  each  under  the  command  of  a  lieu- 
tenant. No  platoon  should  exceed  ten  men  in  size.  Each  in- 
spector is  definitely  responsible  to  the  Chief  for  the  territory  in 
his  district,  and  each  captain  is  responsible  to  his  inspector  for 
the  territory  assigned  to  him.  Cases  for  investigation  within  a 
district  are  assigned  to  the  inspector  for  that  district  and  by  him 
through  a  captain  to  the  men  best  fitted  for  the  work.  An  auxiliary 
squad  for  emergency  work  may  operate  directly  from  headquarters. 

Experience  has  shown  that  a  company  under  a  captain  should 
not  exceed  fifty  men.  The  organization  of  a  company  is  indicated 
in  the  general  chart. 

The  Investigation  Bureau  should  establish  and  maintain  a  close 
association  with  the  Agent  In  Charge  of  the  Bureau  of  Investiga- 
tion of  the  United  States  in  order  to  render  the  greatest  possible 
assistance  to  the  Department  of  Justice.  In  the  larger  cities  and 
wherever  possible  it  is  highly  desirable  that  a  Special  Agent  of 
the  Department  of  Justice  be  assigned  to  the  Local  Branch  to 
direct  the  work  of  investigation. 

It  is  the  duty  of  each  division  chief  to  extend  the  organization 
throughout  the  city  within  the  lines  of  his  department  in  such 
manner  as  to  attain  so  far  as  practicable  the  following  ends:  (1) 
the  enlistment  of  responsible  persons  of  sufficient  number,  in  each 
bank,  business  house  and  industrial  plant  of  importance,  whose 
sworn  duty  it  will  be  to  promptly  report  through  the  proper 
channel  all  cases  of  disloyalty,  industrial  disturbance,  or  other 
matter  likely  to  Injure  or  embarrass  the  Government  of  the  United 
States;  and  (2)  the  establishment  of  an  organization,  through 
such  means,  which  will  at  all  times  be  ready  and  able  to  assist 
the  operation  of  the  Investigation  Bureau  of  the  Local  Branch  and 
of  the  Department  of  Justice  when  their  investigations  shall  re- 
quire an  entrance  into  and  the  securing  of  information  from  such 
banking,  business  or  industrial  establishments. 

In  this  Bureau  large  numbers  of  citizens  will  be  enrolled,  form- 
ing a  WEB  of  cominunicafion  throughout  the  community,  by  means 
of  which  quick  and  responsible  report  will  be  made  of  any  and  all 
matters  affecting  the  welfare  of  the  country  during  the  present 
crisis.  "The  duty  of  members  to  report  will  extend  to  all  indus- 
trial, social  or  political  plans  or  conspiracies,  and  to  all  other 
activities  or  utterances,  designed  to  embarrass  the  Government  in 
the  prosecution  of  the  war. 

In  extending  the  organization  each  Division  Supervisor,  after 
his  enrollment,  will  prepare  a  comprehensive  plan  covering  the 
ground  of  his  division.  He  will  then  proceed  to  enlist  as  Deputies 
under  him,  a  responsible  man  in  each  plant  or  business  house 
within  his  jurisdiction,  such  deputies  to  be  executive  officers  of 
their  respective  business  concerns  if  practicable.     The   deputies 


496  THE  WEB 

after  enrollment  will  select  as  aids  a  reliable  man  in  each  depart- 
ment of  the  business,  preferably  a  superintendent,  foreman  or 
other  man  filling  a  responsible  position  in  his  department.  The 
deputies  will  then  confer  with  the  aids  and  explain  to  them  the 
nature  of  the  organization  and  the  scope  of  their  duties.  The 
aids  will  suggest  to  the  deputies  the  names  of  several  trusted 
employes  in  each  department  who  are  American  citizens  of  legal 
age  and  who,  on  account  of  their  long  service  and  general  char- 
acter, can  be  relied  upon  for  loyal  service  to  the  country  and  the 
employer.  The  men  so  suggested  as  Reporters  will  not  be  ap- 
proached in  the  matter  by  the  deputies  or  aids.  After  the  selec- 
tion of  the  aids  and  reporters,  the  deputy  will  report  his  complete 
plan  of  organization  to  the  Chief  of  the  Local  Branch,  and  upon 
approval  of  the  organization  the  aids  and  reporters  will  be  directed 
by  the  Chief  to  attend  at  convenient  times  for  the  purpose  of  being 
sworn  in. 

The  Real  Estate  Division  reports  all  information  secured  by  its 
members,  and  furnishes  investigators  with  facts  connected  with 
the  construction  of  buildings  and  occupations  of  and  removals  from 
office  buildings,  houses  and  apartments. 

The  Financial  Division  includes  banks,  stock  and  bond  houses 
and  safety  deposit  vaults,  reports  all  information  coming  to  its 
members,  and  furnishes  to  investigators  facts  with  regard  to 
foreign  transactions,  use  of  alien  enemy  funds  and  transactions 
with  Germans.  The  department  will  furnish  valuable  information 
in  connection  with  the  use  of  safety  deposit  vaults  by  alien 
enemies. 

The  Insurance  Division  provides  useful  information  through 
insurance  inspectors  of  the  character  and  use  of  buildings  and 
plants,  and  reports  upon  casualties;  it  also  provides  life  insurance 
data  upon  individuals  and  details  of  marine  insurance. 

The  Professional  Division  includes  engineers,  accountants, 
physicians  and  other  professions,  and  in  addition  to  reporting 
information  coming  to  the  knowledge  of  its  members.  Is  called 
upon  for  professional  assistance  and  advice  in  connection  with 
work  of  the  investigators. 

The  Hotels  Division  includes  hotels,  restaurants  and  theatres. 
The  division  is  organized  so  that  responsible  persons  will  be  en- 
listed in  all  departments  of  all  of  the  hotels  and  restaurants. 
They  will  be  able  to  make  prompt  and  reliable  reports  on  the 
doings  of  all  transients  and  others  connected  with  the  hotels 
and  restaurants. 

The  Transportation  Division  covers  all  railroads,  shipping,  taxi- 
cabs  and  teaming.  This  division  will  report  information  and 
assist  in  investigations  throughout  these  interests. 

The  Public  Utilities  Division  includes  all  lines  and  methods  of 


APPENDIX  B  497 

commiiication,  including  telephone,  telegraph,  wireless,  electric 
light,  gas,  elevated  and  traction  lines  and  other  local  transporta- 
tion. 

The  General  Merchandise  Division  includes  mail  order  houses, 
department   stores,   retail   and   wholesale   houses. 

The  Division  of  Industries  is  subdivided  as  follows:  munitions, 
war  equipment,  metal  trades,  lumber  trades,  electrical,  packing 
houses,  grain,  foodstuffs,  chemicals  and  paints,  and  miscellaneous. 
The  Miscellaneous  Subdivision  will  include,  under  separate  depu- 
ties, automobiles,  building  material,  cigars  and  tobacco,  coal,  con- 
tractors, leather,  motion  picture  producers,  paper  trades,  photog- 
raphers, and  printers  and  engravers. 

Any  one  of  these  subdivisions  may  be  of  sufficient  Importance 
In  a  given  community  to  constitute  a  separate  Division.  On  the 
other  hand,  many  of  the  above  divisions  when  locally  unimportant 
may  be  included  in  "Miscellaneous." 

The  work  of  each  Local  Branch  is  under  the  responsible  direc- 
tion and  control  of  the  Local  Chief.  He  is  responsible  for  the 
efficiency  of  the  work.  It  is  essential  that  an  Assistant  Chief  be 
appointed  to  counsel  with  the  Chief  and  to  act  with  authority  in 
his  absence. 

In  cities  of  larger  size  an  office  in  good  location,  convenient  to 
the  Department  of  Justice,  is  desirable.  An  efficient  organization 
will  readily  command  adequate  financial  support,  and  the  work 
will  be  carried  on  with  less  publicity  and  greater  efficiency  in  an 
independent  office,  suitably  equipped.  Adequate  clerical  and  sten- 
ographic help  should  be  provided  so  that  Investigations  and  reports 
may  be  promptly  made. 

In  connection  with  the  central  office  the  services  of  volunteer 
interpreters  should  be  available  at  all  times  for  translating  papers 
and  interviewing  witnesses. 

Full  cooperation  with  Government  and  police  officials  should 
be  promptly  secured  so  that  they  may  be  quickly  available  in  all 
cases  of  emergency. 

The  work  of  the  various  Branches  and  Divisions  should  be  co- 
ordinated through  the  central  office  so  that  information  or  as- 
sistance of  any  kind  may  be  promptly  secured  at  any  time  by  any 
member  from  any  other  department  through  the  established 
channel. 

Each  Local  Branch  will  operate  in  close  cooperation  with  and 
under  the  general  direction  of  the  Government  Agent  in  charge 
of  the  nearest  office  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice,  and  all  reports  of  investigations,  unless  otherwise 
directed,  will  be  made  to  him.  The  Local  Branch  will  cooperate 
at  all  times,  through  the  Department  of  Justice,  with  other  Gov- 
ernmental Departments  and  agencies,  but  will  undertake  no  work 


498  THE  WEB 

from  them  by  direct  assignment  except  with  the  knowledge  of  the 
Bureau  of  Investigation  of  the  United  States  Department  of  Jus- 
tice, or  by  instruction  from  National  Headquarters,  It  is  the  de- 
sire of  the  organization  to  render  useful  service  to  all  Departments 
of  the  Government. 

Menibers  will  aUvays  le  mindful  of  the  fact  that  they  are  acting 
in  the  interests  of  the  Department  of  Justice  of  the  United  States 
and  conduct  themselves  ivith  dignity,  tact  and  discretion.  They 
must  refrain  from  ivords  and  conduct  in  any  way  calculated  to 
bring  the  Government  or  the  organization  into  disrespect. 

The  work,  of  the  members  must  de  carried  on  wholly  without 
puMicity  or  personal  advertisement. 

Members  will  not  discuss  cases  assigned  to  them  with  other 
members  or  oflEicers  of  the  organization,  but  w^ill  make  their  re- 
ports to  their  immediate  superiors.  Members  will  not  take  outside 
individuals  into  their  confidence. 

Members  must  not  permit  the  source  of  information  of  any  com- 
plaint, or  the  name  of  the  complainant,  to  be  disclosed  under  any 
circumstances.  They  will  state  in  all  cases  where  opportunity 
offers  that  neither  the  American  Protective  League  nor  the  De- 
partment of  Justice  will  disclose  directly  or  indirectly  to  any  per- 
son the  name  or  the  complainant  or  any  person  giving  information 
with  regard  to  the  suspect.  This  cannot  be  too  strongly  impressed 
upon  all  persons  with  whom  the  organization  comes  in  contact. 

No  member  shall  inform  the  suspect  or  his  family  of  the  fact  of 
the  investigation,  or  interview  them  regarding  the  subject  of  in- 
quiry, without  direct  authority  from  his  Captain  or  Chief. 

Members  will  not  disclose  to  suspects,  or  to  persons  not  con- 
nected with  the  organization,  the  names  of  other  members  or  on- 
cers of  the  League.  It  is  important  that  the  work  of  the  League 
be  Impersonal.  The  enforcement  of  this  rule  is  likewise  necessary 
to  safeguard  the  officers  and  members  of  the  League  in  their  work. 

Abuse  of  their  credentials  by  members  by  public  exhibition  or 
otherwise  will  be  ground  for  immediate  discharge  from  member- 
ship. The  use  of  such  credentials  under  an  assumption  of  authority 
for  the  purpose  of  escaping  penalties  for  automobile  speeding,  or 
otherwise,  or  to  secure  special  privileges  in  theatres,  street  cars 
and  other  public  places  is  likewise  ground  for  dismissal.  No  mem- 
ber will  be  permitted  by  such  means  to  embarrass  the  organization 
in  its  work  and  in  its  relation  with  public  officails. 

Members  are  not  privileged  through  membership  in  the  organi- 
zation to  carry  firearms  or  other  weapons  forbidden  by  law.  The 
carrying  of  such  weapons  at  any  time  is  wholly  upon  the  respon- 
sibility of  the  individual. 

No  member  will  be  exempt  from  military  service  under  the  re- 


APPENDIX  B  499 

quirements  of  the  Selective  Service  Regulations,  or  otherwise,  by 
reason  of  his  membership  in  the  organization. 

Members  will  carefully  avoid  any  representation,  direct  or  in- 
direct, that  they  are  Government  oflBcers;  and  will  particularly 
avoid  any  statement  or  implication  that  they  are  members  of  the 
"Secret  Service  Department  of  the  United  States."  The  American 
Protective  League  is  organized  with  the  approval  and  is  operating 
under  the  direction  of  the  United  States  Department  of  Justice, 
Bureau  of  Investigation.  It  is  not  connected  with  the  Secret 
Service  Division  of  the  Treasury  Department, 

When  making  investigations  after  receipt  of  instructions  mem- 
bers of  the  American  Protective  League  are  authorized  to  state 
that  they  are  making  the  investigation  "for  the  Department  of 
Justice." 

Members  of  the  American  Protective  League  have  no  general 
powers  of  arrest.  They  are  investigators  only,  and  have  no  greater 
power  than  private  citizens  in  the  matter  of  arrests.  As  a  general 
rule  a  citizen  can  make  an  arrest  without  warrant  where  a  felony 
has  been  committed  in  his  presence,  but  there  is  no  authority  for 
a  citizen  to  make  an  arrest  without  a  warrant  to  prevent  the  com- 
mission of  a  misdemeanor,  or  for  a  misdemeanor  committed  in  his 
presence  which  does  not  amount  to  a  breach  of  the  peace.  At 
common  law,  and  except  where  changed  by  statute,  it  is  the  duty 
of  every  citizen  to  assist  in  preserving  the  public  peace  and  safety. 
Any  citizen  may  arrest  without  a  warrant  one  who  commits  a 
breach  of  the  peace  in  his  presence,  or  where  there  is  reasonable 
ground  for  apprehension  that  the  arrested  person  is  about  to 
commit  a  breach  of  the  peace.  It  is  essential  to  justify  such  an 
arrest  that  the  offense  committed  shall  amount  to  a  breach  of  the 
peace,  that  such  offense  shall  have  been  actually  committed  or 
attempted  in  the  presence  of  the  person  making  the  arrest,  and 
that  the  arrest  be  made  at  the  time  when  the  offense  was  com- 
mitted. No  private  person  has  the  right  to  make  an  arrest  for 
a  misdemeanor  without  a  warrant  after  the  event  or  upon  mere 
information  or  suspicion.  The  term  "  breach  of  the  peace  "  is  a 
generic  one,  and  includes  riots,  unlawful  assemblies,  riotous  and 
wanton  discharge  of  firearms  in  the  public  streets,  affrays,  as- 
saults, the  use  of  profane,  indecent  and  abusive  language  on  the 
street,  and  in  the  presence  of  others,  and  other  acts  destroying 
public  order  and  tranquility.  The  right  of  citizens  in  this  regard, 
however,  depends  somewhat  upon  the  Statutes  of  the  several  States 
and  members  should  be  advised  by  their  Local  Chiefs  of  their 
authority  in  the  premises.  They  should  act  only  where  the  regular 
police  officers  are  not  reasonably  available  and  where  inaction  may 
be  productive  of  serious  results. 


500  THE  WEB 

Under  the  laws  of  the  United  States  (Act  of  August  29,  1916; 
C.  418,  Sec.  3)  it  is  lawful  for  any  civil  officer  having  authority 
under  the  laws  of  the  United  States  or  of  any  State,  Territory, 
District,  or  possession  of  the  United  States  to  arrest  offenders, 
summarily  to  arrest  a  deserter  from  the  military  service  of  the 
United  States.  Under  the  opinion  of  the  Judge  Advocate  General 
of  the  Army  (C.  17327-1)  a  citizen  acting  under  an  order  or  direc- 
tion of  a  military  officer  may  apprehend  a  deserter,  but  a  citizen, 
and  this  term  includes  a  member  of  the  American  Protective 
League,  has  no  authority  as  such  to  arrest  a  deserter  from  the 
army  in  the  absence  of  a  special  request  or  direction  of  a  military 
officer. 

It  is  seldom  that  the  necessity  for  arrest  arises.  In  such  a  case 
the  member  will  notify  his  Chief  who  will  secure  prompt  action 
by  the  proper  authorities. 

Cases  will  be  assigned  for  investigation  by  the  Chief  to  in- 
spectors and  by  them  transmitted  through  the  captains  to  the 
lieutenants,  who  will  assign  them  to  the  members  best  qualified 
for  the  particular  work.  All  reports  must  be  submitted  in  writing 
through  the  lieutenants  and  captains  to  the  inspectors,  and  by 
the  inspectors  to  the  central  office.  All  reports  of  a  confidential 
nature  should  be  brought  to  the  office  by  the  inspectors  in  person 
or  by  private  messenger.  In  the  smaller  cities  where  inspection 
districts  are  not  created,  the  above  rules  will  be  accordingly 
modified. 

All  investigations  and  reports  are  the  business  of  the  League 
and  must  become  matters  of  permanent  record.  They  may  not  be 
suppressed  or  destroyed,  but  must  be  disposed  of  in  regular  course 
through  the  established  channels  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigation  of 
the  United  States  Department  of  Justice. 

Great  opportunity  foi  service  is  afforded  the  American  Pro- 
tective League  in  reporting  promptly  and  accurately  all  evidence 
of  enemy  propaganda  throughout  the  country.  The  League  is  in  a 
peculiarly  advantageous  position  to  secure  this  information  and 
present  it  to  the  authorities  at  Washington. 


APPENDIX  C 

THE  ORIGINAL  CALL 

The  following  was  the  first  national  summons  sent  out  by 
Mr.  A.  M.  Briggs  in  the  early  days  of  the  American  Pro- 
tective League: 

I  have  been  authorized  by  the  United  States  Department  of 
Justice,  Bureau  of  Investigation,  to  organize  confidentially  in  your 
town,  a  division  of  the  American  Protective  League.  You  have 
been  recommended  to  me  as  a  man  possessing  the  necessary  quali- 
fications to  successfully  organize  and  command  the  organization, 
and  I  will  be  glad  to  have  you  accept  the  responsibility  of  building 
the  organization  in  your  town  and  acting  as  its  Chief. 

The  object  of  the  American  Protective  League,  which  is  entirely 
a  patriotic  one,  no  member  of  which  receives  any  compensation 
whatever  for  his  services,  is  to  work  under  the  direction  of  the 
United  States  Department  of  Justice,  Bureau  of  Investigation,  in 
assisting  the  Department  in  securing  information  of  the  activities 
of  agents  of  foreign  governments,  or  persons  unfriendly  to  this 
government  for  the  protection  of  public  property,  etc.,  and  any 
other  work  that  may  be  assigned  to  us  by  the  Department  at  any 
time. 

Each  local  organization  or  Division  of  the  American  Protective 
League  will  w^ork  under  the  direction  of  the  Government  Agent  in 
charge  of  the  nearest  office  of  the  Department  of  Justice — and  as 
Chief  of  your  local  Division  you  will  report  daily  or  as  often  as 
necessary,  personally  or  by  telephone,  telegraph  or  mail,  to  your 
nearest  Special  Agent  of  the  Department  of  Justice. 

Your  organization  should  be  made  up  only  of  American  citizens 
of  high  moral  character  and  good  standing  in  your  community 
W'ho  are  willing  to  serve  the  organization  from  a  purely  patriotic 
motive  and  without  compensation.  Your  organization  will  be  in 
your  charge  as  Chief  and  you  will  properly  enroll  and  swear  in 
each  member  of  your  organization  on  enrollment  blanks  which 
you  will  keep  on  file  in  your  office.  As  soon  as  your  organizati-ja 
is  complete  you  will  please  forward  me  a  duplicate  list  of  your 
entire  organization,  with  your  name  as  Chief,  with  your  Captains 
and  Lieutenants  and  the  men  enrolled  under  each  Captain. 

501 


502  THE  WEB 

It  is  essential  that  the  greatest  possible  secrecy  be  maintained, 
both  in  forming  the  organization  and  in  conducting  it,  and  that 
all  arrangements  must  be  kept  as  confidential  as  is  practicable, 
and,  further,  that  great  care  nmst  be  taken  by.  your  entire  organi- 
zation at  all  times  that  nothing  is  done  by  it  or  by  any  member 
of  it  to  unnecessarily  alarm  aliens  in  this  country  or  cause  them 
any  apprehension  as  to  the  fair  manner  in  which  they  will  be 
treated,  and  that  no  arrests  should  be  caused  excepting  after  con- 
sultation with  the  local  Government  Agent  or  his  assistants. 

You  will  personally  administer  the  oath  to  each  member  you 
enroll  and  accept  and  at  the  same  time  assign  to  that  member  a 
number, — enter  his  number  on  his  enrollment  blank,  his  com- 
mission card  and  on  the  list  you  will  later  forward  to  this  office. 
Start  with  Number  One,  which  is  your  number  as  Chief. 

It  is  advisable  that  you  consult  with  the  Chief  of  your  local 
Police  or  ask  your  Government  Agent  to  do  so,  so  that  the  Chief 
of  Policy  may  instruct  his  officers  fully  in  reference  to  our  organi- 
zation so  that  the  commission  card  will  be  recognized  by  the 
Police  in  cases  where  such  recognition  is  desired.  You  will,  un- 
doubtedly, find  that  your  local  Chief  of  Police  will  be  very  glad 
to  work  with  your  men  wherever  his  assistance  may  be  necessary 
in  forwarding  the  interest  of  the  Government. 

It  is  the  desire  of  the  Government  that  every  possible  source 
of  information  that  may  be  of  value  to  the  Department  of  Justice 
be  thoroughly  and  efficiently  covered  by  your  organization  In  your 
town  and  you  will  please  use  great  care  in  the  selection  of  the 
Captains,  Lieutenants  and  members  of  each  Company  so  that  each 
Company  can  be  depended  upon  to  efficiently  handle  the  work 
assigned  to  it. 

In  forming  your  organization,  bear  In  mind  the  great  variety  of 
investigation  that  you  are  likely  to  be  called  upon  by  the  Govern- 
ment to  make,  and  make  your  organization  large  enough  to  thor- 
oughly cover  every  business,  manufacturing  and  other  interests 
in  your  town  that  in  your  opinion  should  be  covered  —  so  that  you 
will  be  immediately  informed  of  any  activity  that  may  prove 
directly  or  indirectly  unfriendly  to  the  best  interests  oi  the 
Government. 

You  will  handle  the  organization  work  along  the  most  effective 
lines  possible.  If  convenient  to  do  so  please  confer  with  your 
Government  Agent  on  the  entire  organization  work.  It  is  unnec- 
essary to  call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  greatest  possible 
speed  consistent  with  thorough  and  efficient  organization  is  greatly 
desired  by  the  Government. 

Yours  very  truly, 

(Signed)     A.  M.  BRIGGS, 

General  Superintendent. 


APPENDIX  C  503 

The  selection  of  Chiefs  was  inaugurated  by  the  following 
communication : 

Acting  under  instructions  from  Bureau  of  Investigation,  Depart- 
ment of  Justice,  we  are  required  to  organize  a  separate  branch  of 
the  American  Protective  League  in  each  town.  Our  method  is  to 
secure  the  name  of  a  live,  aggressive  patriot  who  is  willing  to 
undertake  the  responsibility  of  organizing  and  acting  as  Chief  of 
our  branch  in  his  town,  and  then  send  him  the  enclosed  letter 
which  explains  the  organization  work  and  ask  him  to  undertake 
the  work.  I  will  be  very  glad  indeed  to  have  you  act  as  the 
organizer  and  Chief  of  the  Branch  of  the  American  Protective 
League  if  you  can  and  will  do  so.  Otherwise,  I  will  be  very  glad 
to  have  you  turn  the  enclosed  letter  over  to  the  man  in  your  town 
whom  you  select  as  the  best  fitted  for  this  responsibility  and  have 
him  write  me  at  the  above  address  so  that  I  can  authorize  him 
Immediately  to  go  forward  with  the  organization  work. 

We  are  sending  you  under  separate  cover  enrollment  blanks 
for  the  enrollment  of  your  organization.  You  will  please  per- 
sonally fill  out  one  of  these  blanks  and  swear  to  it  before  a  Notary 
signing  the  oath  in  the  presence  of  the  Notary,  then  forward  the 
card  to  this  office.  After  you  have  taken  the  oath  yourself  you 
will  then  proceed  to  administer  it  to  your  men. 

Enclosed  herewith  you  will  find  your  commission  card  as  Chief 
of  your  Division,  which  you  will  please  sign  at  the  same  time  you 
take  your  oath,  and  retain.  When  you  fill  out  your  commission 
card,  please  use  the  date  on  which  you  were  appointed  Chipf. 

As  each  member  takes  the  oath,  you  will  issue  him  a  commission 
card,  filling  in  his  rank  either  as  Captain,  Lieutenant  or  Qperatiye, 
and  have  him  sign  his  card  in  your  presence. 

As  each  man  is  sworn  in,  you  will  please  place  his  number  on 
the  commission  card.  Please  use  great  care  that  no  commission 
card  leaves  your  possession  until  it  is  given  to  a  member  of  your 
organization  after  having  been  signed  by  him  in  your  presence  at 
the  time  he  takes  the  oath. 

The  matter  of  credentials  was  at  first  covered  by  a  letter 
of  instruction  from  the  Superintendent  to  all  Chiefs : 

The  badges  to  be  worn  by  the  members  of  the  American  Pro- 
tective League  will  be  ready  for  shipment  within  a  few  days.  Your 
members  are  not  required  to  wear  a  badge  if  they  do  not  care 
to  do  so.  In  delivering  the  badges  to  your  men,  please  caution 
them  to  wear  the  badge  concealed  at  all  times  and  not  to  display 
it  unless  it  is  necessary  to  do  so  while  making  their  investigations. 
It  is  advisable  that  you  consult  with  the  Chief  of  your  local  Police 


504  THE  WEB 

or  ask  the  local  Government  Agent  to  do  so,  so  that  the  Chief  of 
Police  may  instruct  his  officers  fully  in  reference  to  our  organiza- 
tion so  that  the  badge  will  be  recognized  by  the  police  in  cases 
where  such  recognition  is  desired.  You  will,  undoubtedly,  find 
that  the  local  Chief  of  Police  will  be  very  glad  to  work  with  your 
men  wherever  their  assistance  may  be  necessary  in  forwarding 
the  interests  of  the  Government. 

It  is  directed  that  each  member  of  your  organization  be  sworn 
in  by  you,  taking  the  oath  printed  on  the  back  of  the  enclosed 
enrollment  blank.  Paste  the  oath  at  the  top  of  a  sheet  of  paper, 
and  as  your  men  take  the  oath  have  them  sign  on  the  paper  below, 
together  with  the  number  that  you  will  assign  to  each  man.  This 
list  you  will  retain  in  your  possession,  but  as  soon  as  you  have 
sworn  in  your  entire  membership,  please  send  this  office  a  com- 
plete list  of  your  members  with  their  new  numbers. 


APPENDIX  D 

DIGEST  OF  THE  AMENDED   ESPIONAGE  ACT  AS   PRINTED 
IN  "  THE  SPY  GI^SS,"  JUNE,  1918 

Signed  by  President  Wilson  on  May  16,  the  amended 
espionage  laws  opens  a  new  chapter  in  the  work  of  the 
American  Protective  League.  For  the  first  time  we  have 
an  inclusive  law  under  which  to  operate — a  law  broad 
enough  in  its  scope  and  classifications  to  cover  and  define 
as  serious  crimes  a  multitude  of  offenses  which  were  classed 
as  minor  by  our  peace-time  code  but  actually  offered 
serious  hindrances  to  this  country's  military  operations  and 
preparations. 

For  the  first  time,  too,  heavy  penalties  have  been  provided 
for  acts  and  speeches  which  before  could  hardly  be  punished 
at  all  under  the  law.  ]\Iaximum  sentences  of  twenty  years 
imprisonment  and  $10,000  fine  are  not  to  be  taken  lightly 
either  by  disloyal  and  pacifist  citizens  or  by  unfriendly  or 
enemy  aliens  who  have  made  it  their  business,  since  war 
was  declared,  to  invent  and  circulate  discreditable  stories 
about  almost  every  phase  of  America's  war  activities. 

Disloyalty  Now  a  Crime 

No  distinction  is  made  between  the  disloyal  talk  or  act  of  a  citi- 
zen and  the  hostile  speech  or  deed  of  an  alien,  enemy  or  other- 
wise. The  act  or  speech  is  the  offense  and  whoever  commits  it 
must  pay  the  penalty  —  though  the  law  allows  a  good  deal  of 
latitude  to  the  court  in  determining  the  latter. 

All  this  means  a  tremendous  simplification  of  every  member's 
labors.  So  far-reaching  and  important  are  the  provisions  of  the 
amended  law  —  so  clearly  does  it  indicate  the  chief  kinds  of  spying 
and  of  propaganda  which  the  League  must  combat,  that  the  whole 
catalogue  of  crimes  may  well  be  set  down  here  for  study  and 
ready   reference  in   months  to   come.     Omitting  the  preliminary 

505 


506  THE  WEB 

enacting  clauses  and  breaking  up  the  main  section  into  handy- 
paragraphs,  the  amended  law  now  reads  as  follows: 

OFFENSES: 

I  —  False  and  Interfering  Reports 

Section  3.  Whoever,  when  the  United  States  is  at  war,  shall 
willfully  make  or  convey  false  reports  or  false  statements  with 
intent  to  interfere  with  the  operation  or  success  of  the  military 
or  naval  forces  of  the  United  States,  or  to  promote  the  success 
of  its  enemies,  — 

//  —  Obstructing  Bond  Sales,  etc. 

—  whoever  shall  willfully  make  or  convey  false  reports  or  false 
statements,  or  say  or  do  anything  except  by  way  of  bona  fide  and 
not  disloyal  advice  to  an  investor  or  investors,  with  intent  to 
obstruct  the  sale  by  the  United  States  of  bonds  or  other  securities 
of  the  United  States  or  the  making  of  loans  by  or  to  the  United 
States,  — 

III  —  Inciting  or  Causing  Mutiny 

—  whoever,  when  the  United  States  is  at  war,  shall  willfully  cause 
or  attempt  to  cause  or  incite  or  attempt  to  incite,  Insubordination, 
disloyalty,  mutiny,  or  refusal  of  duty,  in  the  military  or  naval 
forces  of  the  United  States, — 

IV  —  Ohstriicting  Enlistments 

—  whoever  shall  willfully  obstruct  or  attempt  to  obstruct  the 
recruiting  or  enlistment  service  of  the  United  States,  — 

V  —  Attacks  on  Oovernment,  Flag,  etc. 

—  whoever,  when  the  United  States  is  at  war,  shall  willfully  utter, 
print,  write,  or  publish  any  disloyal,  profane,  scurrilous,  or  abusive 
language  about  the  form  of  government  of  the  United  States,  or 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  or  the  military  or  naval 
forces  of  the  United  States,  or  the  flag  of  the  United  States,  or 
the  uniform  of  the  Army  or  Navy  of  the  United  States,  or  any 
language  intended  to  bring  the  form  of  government  of  the  United 
States,  or  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  or  the  military 
or  naval  forces  of  the  United  States,  or  the  flag  of  the  United 
States,  or  the  uniform  of  the  Army  or  Navy  of  the  United  States 
into  contempt,  scorn,  contumely,  or  disrepute,  — 

VI  —  Encouraging  Resistance 

—  whoever  shall  willfully  utter,  print,  write,  or  publish  any  Ian- 


APPENDIX  D  507 

guage  intended  to  incite,  provoke,  or  encourage  resistance  to  the 
United  States,  or  to  promote  the  cause  of  its  enemies,  or  shall 
willfully  display  the  flag  of  any  enemy, — 

Vir  —  Curtailing  Production 

—  whoever  shall  willfully  by  utterance,  writing,  printing,  publica- 
tion, or  language  spoken,  urge,  incite,  or  advocate  any  curtailment 
of  production  in  this  country  of  anything  or  things,  product  or 
products,  necessary  or  essential  to  the  prosecution  of  the  war  in 
which  the  United  States  may  be  engaged,  with  intent  by  such 
curtailment  to  cripple  or  hinder  the  United  States  in  the  prosecu- 
tion of  the  war,  — 

VIII  —  Defending  or  Teaching  Disloyalty 

—  whoever  shall  willfully  advocate,  teach,  defend,  or  suggest  the 
doing  of  any  of  the  acts  or  things  in  this  section  enumerated,  — 

IX  —  Supporting  the  Enemy 

—  and  whoever  shall  by  word  or  act  support  or  favor  the  cause  of 
any  country  with  which  the  United  States  is  at  war,  er  by  word  or 
act  oppose  the  cause  of  the  United  States  therein, — 

THE  PENAIiTY: 

—  shall  be  punished  by  a  fine  of  not  more  than  $10,000  or  imprison- 
ment for  not  more  than  twenty  years,  or  both. 

An  additional  section  of  the  amended  law  provides  for  the 
instant  dismissal  of  any  official  or  employee  of  the  United  States 
who  commits  a  disloyal  act  or  utters  disloyal  or  unpatriotic  lan- 
guage.    This  is  as  follows: 

Any  employee  or  official  of  the  United  States  Government  who 
commits  any  disloyal  act  or  utters  any  impatriotic  or  disloyal 
language,  or  who.  in  an  abusive  and  violent  manner  criticizes  the 
Army  or  Navy  or  the  flag  of  the  United  States  shall  be  at  once 
dismissed  from  the  service.  Any  such  employee  shall  be  dismissed 
by  the  head  of  the  department  in  which  the  employee  may  be 
engaged,  and  any  such  official  shall  be  dismissed  by  the  authority 
having  power  to  appoint  a  successor  to  the  dismissed  official. 

No  Mail  For  Propagandists 

Plotting  or  propaganda  by  mail  is  made  punishable  by  imme- 
diate withdrawal  of  postal  privileges  from  any  individual  or  firm, 
against  whom  satisfactory  evidence  Is  brought  that  he  Is  violating 
any  provision  of  this  new  law.  Conviction  is  not  necessary: 
evidence  satisfactory  to  the  Postmaster  General  is  enough  to  close 
the  mails  to  the  offender.    Here  is  the  amended  section: 


508  THE  WEB 

Sec.  4.  When  the  United  States  is  at  war,  the  Postmaster 
General  may,  upon  evidence  satisfactory  to  him  that  any  person 
or  concern  is  using  the  mails  in  violation  of  any  of  the  provisions 
of  this  Act,  instruct  the  postmaster  at  any  post  office  at  which 
mail  is  received  addressed  to  such  person  or  concern  to  return 
to  the  postmaster  at  the  office  at  which  they  were  originally 
mailed  all  letters  or  other  matter  so  addressed,  w^ith  the  words 
"  Mail  to  this  address  undeliverable  under  Espionage  Act "  plainly 
written  or  stamped  upon  the  outside  thereof  and  all  such  letters 
or  other  matter  so  returned  to  such  postmasters  shall  be  by  them 
returned  to  the  senders  thereof  under  such  regulations  as  the 
Postmaster  General  may  prescribe. 

An  All-Embracing  Clause 

Read  over  the  ninth  clause  of  section  3  again:  "whoever  shall 
by  word  or  act  support  or  favor  the  cause  of  any  country  with 
which  the  United  States  is  at  war,  or  by  word  or  act  oppose  the 
cause  of  the  United  States  therein — ."  That  clause  alone  serves 
to  make  enemy  propaganda  or  native-born  sedition  a  hazardous 
undertaking  in  any  community  where  League  members  are  awake 
and  on  the  job. 

Gone  is  the  necessity  of  arguing  and  pleading  with  the  pro- 
German,  the  pacifist  and  the  native-born  disloyalist  to  speak  with 
straight  tongues.  Loyal  citizens  retain  the  right  to  free  speech  and 
to  honest  and  reasonable  criticism  of  the  ^Government's  actions 
and  policies.  But  indiscriminate  abuse  and  lying  reports  of  what 
is  happening  here  at  home  or  overseas  are  going  to  stop.  The 
amended  law  is  a  powerful  weapon  put  into  our  hands  for  that 
very  purpose. 

Notice  also  that  the  word  "  willfully  "  is  omitted  in  Clause  Nine. 
To  convict  a  man  of  disloyalty  or  sedition,  you  will  not  have  to 
prove  his  disloyal  or  hostile  intention.  Like  murder  or  burglary, 
espionage  and  sedition  are  become  positive  crimes.  No  one  who 
commits  them  can  plead  innocent  intent. 


APPENDIX  E 

REMOVAL  OF  ALIEN  ENEMIES 

R.  S.  SEC.  4067  (as  amended).  Whenever  there  is  a  declared 
war  between  the  United  States  and  any  foreign  nation  or  govern- 
ment, or  any  invasion  or  predatory  incursion  is  perpetrated,  at- 
tempted, or  threatened  against  the  territory  of  the  United  States, 
by  any  foreign  nation  or  government,  and  the  President  makes 
public  proclamation  of  the  event,  all  natives,  citizens,  denizens,  or 
subjects  of  the  hostile  nation  or  government,  I)ei7ig  of  the  age  of 
fourteen  years  and  upward,  who  shall  be  within  the  United  States, 
and  not  actually  naturalized,  shall  be  liable  to  be  apprehended, 
restrained,  secured  and  removed,  as  alien  enemies.  The  President 
is  authorized,  in  any  such  event,  by  his  proclamation  thereof,  or 
other  public  act,  to  direct  the  conduct  to  be  observed,  on  the  part 
of  the  United  States  toward  the  aliens  who  become  so  liable;  the 
manner  and  degree  of  the  restraint  to  which  they  shall  be  subject, 
and  in  what  cases,  and  upon  what  security  their  residences  shall 
be  permitted,  and  to  provide  for  the  removal  of  those  who,  not 
being  permitted  to  reside  within  the  United  States,  refuse  or 
neglect  to  depart  therefrom;  and  to  establish  any  other  regulations, 
which  are  found  necessary  in  the  premises  and  for  the  public 
safety.  (Act  of  July  6,  1798,  Chap.  66,  Sec.  1,  Stat.  577.  As 
amended  by  Act  of  April  16,  1918:  Public  No.  131  —  65th  Congress: 
H.  R.  9504.) 


509 


APPENDIX  F 

PRESIDENTIAL  PROCLAMATION  REGARDING  REGULATION 
OP  ALIEN  ENEMIES 

Pursuant  to  the  authority  vested  in  me,  I  hereby  declare  and 
establish  the  following  regulations,  which  I  find  necessary  in  the 
premises  and  for  the  public  safety: 

(1)  An  alien  enemy  shall  not  have  in  his  possession  at  any 
time  or  place  any  fire-arm,  weapon  or  implement  of  war,  or 
component  part  thereof,  ammunition,  maxim,  or  other  silencer, 
bomb,  or  explosive  or  material  used  in  the  manufacture  of  ex- 
plosives; 

(2)  An  alien  enemy  shall  not  have  in  his  possession  at  any 
time  or  place,  or  use  or  operate  any  aircraft  or  tcireless  apparatus, 
or  any  form  of  signalling  device,  or  any  form  of  cipher  code,  or 
any  paper,  document  or  book  w-ritten  or  printed  in  cipher  or  in 
which  there  may  be  invisible  writing. 

(3)  All  property  found  in  the  possession  of  an  alien  enemy 
in  violation  of  the  foregoing  regulations  shall  be  subject  to 
seizure  by  the  United  States; 

(4)  An  alien  enemy  shall  not  approach  or  he  found  xmthin  one- 
half  of  a  mile  of  any  Federal  or  State  fort,  camp,  arsenal,  aircraft 
station.  Government  or  naval  vessel,  navy  yard,  factory,  or  work- 
shop for  the  manufacture  of  munitions  of  war  or  of  any  products 
for  the  use  of  the  army  or  navy; 

(5)  An  alien  enemy  shall  not  write,  print,  or  pu'blish  any  attack 
or  threats  against  the  Government  or  Congress  of  the  United 
States,  or  either  branch  thereof,  or  against  the  measures  or  policy 
of  the  United  States,  or  against  the  person  or  property  of  any 
person  in  the  military,  naval,  or  civil  service  of  the  United  States, 
or  of  the  States  or  Territories,  or  of  the  District  of  Columbia,  or 
of  the  municipal  governments  therein; 

(6)  An  alien  enemy  shall  not  commit  or  abet  any  hostile  act 
against  the  United  States,  or  give  information,  aid,  or  comfort  to 
Its  enemies; 

(7)  An  alien  enemy  shall  not  reside  in  or  continue  to  reside 
in,  to  remain  in,  or  enter  any  locality  which  the  President  may 
from  time  to  time  designate  by  Executive  Order  as  a  prohibited 

510 


APPENDIX  F  511 

area  in  which  residence  by  an  alien  enemy  shall  be  found  by  him 
to  constitute  a  danger  to  the  public  peace  and  safety  of  the 
United  States  except  ly  'permit  from  the  President  and  except 
under  such  limitations  or  restrictions  as  the  President  may 
prescribe; 

(8)  An  alien  enemy  whom  the  President  shall  have  reasoinable 
cause  to  believe  to  be  aiding  or  about  to  aid  the  enemy,  or  to  be 
at  large  to  the  danger  of  the  public  peace  or  safety  of  the  United 
States,  or  to  have  violated  or  to  be  about  to  violate  any  of  these 
regulations,  shall  remove  to  any  location  designated  by  the  Pres- 
ident by  Executive  Order,  and  shall  not  remove  therefrom  without 
a  permit,  or  shall  depart  from  the  United  States  if  so  required  by 
the  President; 

(9)  No  alien  enemy  shall  depart  from  the  United  States  until 
he  shall  have  receive  such  permit  as  the  President  shall  prescribe, 
or  except  under  order  of  a  court,  judge,  or  justice,  under  Sections 
4069  and  4070  of  the  Revised  Statutes; 

(10)  No  alien  enemy  shall  land  in  or  enter  the  United  States, 
except  under  such  restrictions  and  at  such  places  as  the  President 
may  prescribe; 

(11)  If  necessary  to  prevent  violations  of  these  regulations,  all 
alien  enemies  will  l)e  obliged  to  register: 

(12)  An  alien  enemy  whom  there  may  be  reasonable  cause  to 
believe  to  be  aiding  or  about  to  aid  the  enemy,  or  who  may  be  at 
large  to  the  danger  of  the  public  peace  or  safety,  or  who  violates, 
or  attempts  to  violate,  or  of  whom  there  is  reasonable  ground  to 
believe  that  he  is  about  to  violate,  any  regulation  duly  promul- 
gated by  the  President,  or  any  criminal  law  of  the  United  States, 
or  of  the  States  or  Territories  thereof,  will  be  subject  to  summary 
arrest  by  the  United  States  Marshal,  or  his  deputy,  or  such  other 
ofRcer  as  the  President  shall  designate,  and  to  confinement  in  such 
penitentiary,  prison,  jail,  military  camp,  or  other  place  of  detention 
as  may  be  directed  by  the  President.  This  proclamation  and  the 
regulations  herein  contained  shall  extend  and  apply  to  all  land 
and  water,  continental  or  insular,  in  any  way  within  the  juris- 
diction of  the  United  States. 

NOTE — Made  applicable  to  females,  who  are  natives,  citizens, 
denizens  or  subjects  of  Germany,  by  President's  Proclamation  of 
April  19,  1917,  except  that  Regulation  4  was  not  to  become  effective 
until  such  time  as  might  be  fixed  and  declared  by  the  Attorney 
General. 


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UNIVEIISITY  OF  CALiyORNIA  LIBRARY 

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